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The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
On sale
30th July 2010
Price: £16.16
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Digital (deliver electronic) / ISBN-13: 9781444708059
In your hands is a place like no other: a tiny, man-made island in the bay of Nagasaki, for two hundred years the sole gateway between Japan and the West. Here, in the dying days of the 18th century, a young Dutch clerk arrives to make his fortune. Instead he loses his heart.
Step onto the streets of Dejima and mingle with scheming traders, spies, interpreters, servants and concubines as two cultures converge. In a tale of integrity and corruption, passion and power, the key is control – of riches and minds, and over death itself.
Step onto the streets of Dejima and mingle with scheming traders, spies, interpreters, servants and concubines as two cultures converge. In a tale of integrity and corruption, passion and power, the key is control – of riches and minds, and over death itself.
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Reviews
Compared with almost everything being written now, it is vertiginously ambitious - and brilliant . . . He can write as thrillingly about large-scale events as he can about the tiny details of the private world . . . turned one way this novel is a thriller with a glittering seam of a love story running through it (or is it the other way round?); turned another, it is a sumptuous historical novel on the collision of cultures caught at a particular crossroads of history
Stunning
A heady potion of betrayal, love, superstition, power politics and murder . . . And all this in the most extraordinary prose
However densely charted and richly sketched, this sumptuous imbroglio never drags . . . Mitchell flexes his prose virtuosity. More than before, those muscles do the heart's work
Moving, thoughtful and unexpectedly funny
Hugely enjoyable . . . It cracks along, holding us in suspense from the beginning
Masterpieces make their own rules, and this book is definitely one of them
David Mitchell is back with a bang . . . superb
Ambitious and fascinating . . . Comparisons to Tolstoy are inevitable, and right on the money
A pitch-perfect masterclass in the art, and magic, of narrative
A marvel - entirely original among contemporary British novels, revealing its author as, surely, the most impressive fictional mind of his generation
Extraordinarily entertaining and well-realised
For a tour de force, it's surprisingly nimble, emotionally complex and simply unforgettable
As compelling as it is strange, the novel is testament to the originality of Mitchell's vision and his great craftiness as a storyteller
Almost every sentence shimmers with precise, opaque and brilliantly realised writing . . . An historical novel on a deliberately grand scale, it never loses its quiet intimacy
The details are fascinating and the prose beautiful . . . simply magnificent
Sharp, hilarious, exhilarating stuff. Utterly enjoyable
An affecting conclusion underscores Mr Mitchell's mastery here not only of virtuosic literary fireworks, but also of the quieter arts of empathy and traditional storytelling
Dazzles with its density and intensity, its ambition and grandeur
Mitchell's masterpiece; and also, I am convinced, a masterpiece of our time
The novelist who's shown us fiction's future has written a classic tale . . . an epic of sacrificial love, clashing civilizations and enemies who won't rest until whole family lines have been snuffed out
A vastly entertaining historical novel, giving the reader a glimpse into a world we know so little of and charting a fascinating period of history
A marvellously wrought novel, full of fully formed characters and the kind of detail that allows you to sink deep into its imaginary world. I was sorry when I finished
A formidable marvel