For fun, I’ll add Orlando, 2001: A Space Odyssey, David Mitchell’s previous novels,[*1] and Italo Calvino’s metafictional masterpiece If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler. Mitchell read Calvino’s novel at university, and he has said that he sees Cloud Atlas as “in conversation” with Calvino, who, in turn, saw his work as “clearly” influenced by Vladimir Nabokov.

