What is the setting of Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell?

The setting in Cloud Atlas changes with each chapter. The novel takes the reader from the South Sea Islands (in "Adam Ewing") to contemporary London (in "Timothy Cavendish") to post-apocalypse Hawaii (in "Sloosh'a's Crossin'") and back again. The time period progresses until "Sloosh'a's Crossin'" and then regresses in the same pattern, so that the novel begins in 1849, goes well into the future, and ends again in 1849.