David Mitchell: From SuperValu to Utopia Avenue with the local and the global 

The author on his new novel, Utopia Avenue,  and how he didn't mind lockdown in West Cork 

David Mitchell hopes Utopia Avenue repeats the success of Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks. 

David Mitchell’s local supermarket makes a memorable cameo appearance in his 2014 novel The Bone Clocks, in which the Sheep’s Head peninsula in Co Cork has become a Chinese-held outpost in a post-apocalyptic society ravaged by ecological catastrophe and ‘Ratflu’. Did Mitchell ever envisage that six years later, he would be standing in the same establishment, stocking up on supplies ahead of a pandemic lockdown?

Mitchell chuckles when I mention the (frankly terrifying) section in The Bone Clocks and its reference to the (fictional) bygone days of the famed Scally’s Supervalu in Clonakilty, before oil has run out and food is in short supply.