In 2007, Time magazine named him one of the most influential novelists in the world. He has twice been short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. The New York Times Book Review called him simply “a genius.” Now David Mitchell lends fresh credence to The Guardian’s claim that “each of his books seems entirely different from that which preceded it.” The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is a stunning departure for this brilliant, restless, and wildly ambitious author, a giant leap forward by even his own high standards. A bold and epic novel of a rarely visited point in history, it is a work as exquisitely rendered as it is irresistibly readable.
The year is 1799, the place Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor, the “high-walled, fan-shaped artificial island” that is the Japanese Empire’s single port and sole window onto the world, designed to keep the West at bay; the farthest outpost …
In 2007, Time magazine named him one of the most influential novelists in the world. He has twice been short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. The New York Times Book Review called him simply “a genius.” Now David Mitchell lends fresh credence to The Guardian’s claim that “each of his books seems entirely different from that which preceded it.” The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is a stunning departure for this brilliant, restless, and wildly ambitious author, a giant leap forward by even his own high standards. A bold and epic novel of a rarely visited point in history, it is a work as exquisitely rendered as it is irresistibly readable.
The year is 1799, the place Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor, the “high-walled, fan-shaped artificial island” that is the Japanese Empire’s single port and sole window onto the world, designed to keep the West at bay; the farthest outpost of the war-ravaged Dutch East Indies Company; and a de facto prison for the dozen foreigners permitted to live and work there. To this place of devious merchants, deceitful interpreters, costly courtesans, earthquakes, and typhoons comes Jacob de Zoet, a devout and resourceful young clerk who has five years in the East to earn a fortune of sufficient size to win the hand of his wealthy fiancée back in Holland.
But Jacob’s original intentions are eclipsed after a chance encounter with Orito Aibagawa, the disfigured daughter of a samurai doctor and midwife to the city’s powerful magistrate. The borders between propriety, profit, and pleasure blur until Jacob finds his vision clouded, one rash promise made and then fatefully broken. The consequences will extend beyond Jacob’s worst imaginings. As one cynical colleague asks, “Who ain’t a gambler in the glorious Orient, with his very life?”
A magnificent mix of luminous writing, prodigious research, and heedless imagination, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is the most impressive achievement of its eminent author.
(jacket flaps)
Review of 'The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
I don't think I've read a David Mitchell book yet that I didn't love. This is in many ways a much more straightforward book than you might be used to from him, but the combination of vivid writing, humour, an incredible amount of historical research (it's set on a Dutch trading outpost in the bay of Nagasaki in 1799) makes it if anything an ever stronger read. How he straddles the different sensibilities of the Dutch, Japanese and English through language is amazing, but of course this wouldn't count for much if it wasn't also a very emotionally captivating novel.
Review of 'The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
It is so funny when you find the same character in two different books yet in two different registers. It is good to meet them again, it is like re-encountering an old acquaintance. This historical novel has this and that – merchants, scribers, nuns, samurais, captains, the rich, the dispossed, all so full of life, some even bigger than life. All bring to our attention issues like loyalty, honesty, corruption, fear, bravery, lust, eligion. How unthinkably big power can get to be, yet how it can be defeated when enough people are determined to fight for justice and space for love no matter what.
I found especially touching how, when the main character seemingly looses all because he refuses to be corrupted, he gains the simpathy and respect of all around him (except his bosses) all who again seemed ruthless and selfish at the beginning. May be that is why …
It is so funny when you find the same character in two different books yet in two different registers. It is good to meet them again, it is like re-encountering an old acquaintance. This historical novel has this and that – merchants, scribers, nuns, samurais, captains, the rich, the dispossed, all so full of life, some even bigger than life. All bring to our attention issues like loyalty, honesty, corruption, fear, bravery, lust, eligion. How unthinkably big power can get to be, yet how it can be defeated when enough people are determined to fight for justice and space for love no matter what.
I found especially touching how, when the main character seemingly looses all because he refuses to be corrupted, he gains the simpathy and respect of all around him (except his bosses) all who again seemed ruthless and selfish at the beginning. May be that is why I loved it, because it gives us the triumph of good over evil that we all long for, in such a logical terms, like it is the natural thing to happen because alongside this triumph we have witnessed human and natural miseries too. And I thought the epilogue touching and emotional, not unnecessary at all.
