He has been shortlisted twice for the Booker Prize and lives in Ireland. This is the story of the band’s brief, blazing journey from Soho clubs and draughty ballrooms to the promised land of America, just when the Summer of Love was receding into something much darker – a multi-faceted tale of dreams, drugs, love, sexuality, madness and grief of stardom’s wobbly ladder and fame’s Faustian pact and of the collision between youthful idealism and jaded reality as the Sixties drew to a close.Ībove all, this bewitching novel celebrates the power of music to connect across divides, define an era and thrill the soul.ĭavid Mitchell’s seven novels include Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks. The band produced only two albums in two years, yet their musical legacy lives on. Utopia Avenue might be the most curious British band you’ve never heard of.Įmerging from London’s psychedelic scene in 1967, folksinger Elf Holloway, blues bassist Dean Moss, guitar virtuoso Jasper de Zoet and jazz drummer Griff Griffin together created a unique sound, with lyrics that captured their turbulent lives and times. David Mitchell's new novel tells the unexpurgated story of Utopia Avenue of riots in the streets and revolutions in the head of drugs, thugs, madness, love, sex, death, art of the families we choose and the ones we don't of fame's Faustian pact and stardom's wobbly ladder.The spectacular new novel from the bestselling author of CLOUD ATLAS and THE BONE CLOCKS, ‘one of the most brilliantly inventive writers of this, or any country’ ( Independent). Emerging from London's psychedelic scene in 1967 and fronted by folksinger Elf Holloway, guitar demigod Jasper de Zoet and blues bassist Dean Moss, Utopia Avenue released only two LPs during its brief and blazing journey from the clubs of Soho and draughty ballrooms to Top of the Pops and the cusp of chart success, to glory in Amsterdam, prison in Rome and a fateful American fortnight in the autumn of 1968. Guitarist Jasper de Zoet, a shy, half-Dutch public-school musical. Utopia Avenue are the strangest British band you've never heard of. Folk-rock-psychedelic quartet Utopia Avenue is formed. The spectacular new novel from the bestselling author of CLOUD ATLAS and THE BONE CLOCKS, 'one of the most brilliantly inventive writers of this, or any country' (Independent).

Utopia ave