The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell

This is a historical novel of a little-known place and time, and one only wonders how Mitchell ever came to pick this setting. It takes place in 1799 on Dejima, a small island in Nagasaki Harbor in Japan, headquarters of the Dutch East India Trading Company, Japan's only contact with the Western world. The hero is a young Dutch clerk, Jacob De Zoet, who has come to make enough money in five years to marry his sweetheart back in Holland. With a very Dickens-like cast of characters and plot, the novel includes a flawed hero, an intelligent young woman in distress, various self-serving petty villains, and one truly monstrous evil villain, who eventually receives his just punishment. We have betrayals with long-lasting consequences and heroic sacrifices. Along the way we get a smattering of history and Japanese culture, but this is mainly an engaging story of human beings attempting to find honor and happiness, which could have taken place any time, any place.

The dust jacket says that Mitchell did "prodigious research" to write this book, so I presume it is historically accurate, but that is almost beside the point. The value of this book lies in its plot, which is absorbing; in its dialogue, which is so well done that each character has a different "voice"; and in its narration, which is inventive and original. His inclusion of small descriptive sections in the form of traditional Japanese poetry was an interesting addition.

I have read two other books by Mitchell, Number 9 Dreams and Cloud Atlas, and both were very good, but entirely different from this one. I look forward to reading his two remaining books; he is an author worth following.