The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet..., David Mitchell
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet..., David Mitchell
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The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

Author: David Mitchell

Narrator: Jonathan Aris, Paula Wilcox

Unabridged: 18 hr 56 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 06/29/2010


Synopsis

By the New York Times bestselling author of The Bone Clocks and Cloud AtlasLonglisted for the Man Booker Prize

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 Zoetis 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, fanshaped 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.

About David Mitchell

English born author, David Stephen Mitchell is a novelist and screenwriter. He was born in Southport and raised in Malvern, Worcestershire, where he attended Hanley Castle High School. He also attended and graduated from the University of Kent, with a degree in English and American literature. He then completed his M.A. in Comparative Literature.

Mitchell has lived in different areas of the world. He lived for a year in Sicily, then moved to Hiroshima, Japan where he taught English for eight years. He then returned to England to focus his efforts on writing, and became financially capable of earning a living with his writing.

Mitchell has awards and best sellers from his body of work: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, Black Swan Green, Cloud Atlas, Number9Dream, Ghostwritter and The Bone Clocks. After the release of his novel adapted for screen, Cloud Atlas, Mitchell became a screenwriter. In collaboration with others, he wrote the series finale of the television series, Sense8, and for the film Matrix 4. He and his wife live in Ireland with their two children.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Ken-ichi on June 01, 2010

I've spent a week reading this very fine novel and a weekend attempting to unpack it, and I have little doubt I'll spend a good few years thinking about it from time to time. If one measure of a novel is its ability to simultaneously inspire and confound engagement, then Mitchell has once again turn......more

Goodreads review by Violet on February 05, 2019

It's been a while since I read and loved this the first time and in the interim Mitchell has written two books which have caused me to think less of him as a novelist - The Bone Clocks and Slade House, both of which for me had a kind of juvenile silliness running through them. Therefore I was a bit......more

Goodreads review by Vit on September 16, 2021

The main hero is surrounded with perfidy on all sides - greedy and perfidious compatriots, secretive and treacherous natives, conniving and wily invaders. We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love. He is the only man brave enough to love but he is paid with hatred. B......more

Goodreads review by tim on June 14, 2010

Since discovering David Mitchell a little over a year ago, I have devoured all five of his novels to date. Yet I still cannot say what it is that keeps me impatiently coming back for more. He is a master of voices. He breathes life into characters quickly and effortlessly. He is not afraid to dive i......more

Goodreads review by Paul on November 23, 2012

THE APPRENTICE WEEK 6 - THE SEMI-FINAL Voiceover : Lord Sugar is looking for a historical novelist to invest in. He scoured the country for the very best. Twelve were selected to begin the process. After six weeks of hard battling, only three are left.* It's the Apprentice Week Six! (We see a montage o......more