Book review

[riontel]

I'd like to recommend to everybody who likes either historical fiction in general or Japanese settings in particular The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell. While it still has a hint of mysticism encountered in his other works, this is a lot more about the meeting of European and Japanese cultures at the turn of the 19th century and the story of one particular man. Jacob de Zoet is a Dutch East India Company's clerk newly arrived on the tiny island of Dijima off the cost of Nagasaki, the only scrap of Japanese land where Westerners were allowed. I really liked how Mitchell slowly tells Jacob's story and stories of some of the other characters, in bits and pieces and from different points of view until the whole picture is completed. It's not entirely linear but not as fragmented as, say, Ghostwritten. It is one story made up of small stories that all lead back to the main one. I liked Mitchell's writing style and the richness of his language and complexities of topics and people's relationships and interactions. I am not enough of a history buff to notice if Mitchell goofed anywhere in the facts and I confine nitpicking to my immediate area of expertise which, amazingly enough, played no role in the book.