Like J.R.R. Tolkien, author David Mitchell has a Middle-earth in his new book

For his new book, Slade House, David Mitchell is following in J.R.R. Tolkien's footsteps by creating a Middle-earth of his own. Photo: Paul Stuart

Cloud Atlas writer David Mitchell says he believes he has created his own version of Middle-earth for all his future books.

Teasing a book festival crowd recently with excerpts from his forthcoming novel, Slade House, he says it would inhabit the same Newtonian law-bending universe of 2014’s The Bone Clocks. It is “by far the darkest book I’ve done”, he says, and “an exercise in world-building and cosmology”.