The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet

With precise diction and purpose David Mitchell again has written a novel worthy of winning more prizes than it did. Mitchell's love of Japan and his characters can be read throughout the book. I would recommend this to everyone in to contemporary literature and even more so for the people into historical novels.

The life of a young Dutchman, Jacob de Zoet, goes to the trading post of Dejima close to Nagasaki in the Japanese Empire for the hopes of some extra cash. As a clerk he hopes to make some money so he is worthy of marrying a woman he loves back in Zeeland (the Netherlands). He finds out soon enough that in the Dutch East India Company in the tail of the 18th century honesty and diligence are not always considered virtues by his superiors, peers or subordinates. Corruption and fraud is what keeps the company a float. And his report digging up dirt on all his superiors predecessors is not wholeheartedly welcomed.
Through events like these the intelligent clerk learns to be a shrewd diplomat and not to blindly the virtues of his superiors.

I think I'll leave it at that. The book is to intriguing and intricate.. just read it yourself. Mitchell is an artist.

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.

I've been doing a lot of genre reading lately; lots of fantasy, the occasional crime story – and a non-fiction title here and there. With this novel I got back into a big, meaty, literate tale. You know, high-brow stuff. I'd almost forgotten how captivating that can be and this one did captivate. This story is about a Dutchman, Jacob de Zoet, who travels to a small island called Dejima located across a small bridge outside of Nagasaki in Japan. The year is 1799 and the Japanese do not allow foreigners within their country. But the Dutch East Indies Company is allowed to have about a dozen traders live on the small manmade island of Dejima. (There's a sketch of it early in the story.) Jacob has given himself five years to make his fortune so that he can return and win the hand of a woman back home in Holland. But things take an interesting turn after he meets a local midwife named Orito Aibagawa and he becomes somewhat besotted with her. My expectations for the story were changed completely after about 100+ pages into the story and it wouldn't be the last time. This was very well written and absorbing. It was a story I was eager to return to again and again. I'll most likely be reading more books by this author. (This would make a great book-club book.)