A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific Ocean in 1850 a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in Belgium between the First and Second World Wars a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan's California a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors the testament of a genetically modified 'dinery server' on death-row and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation - the narrators of Cloud Atlas hear each other's echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great and small