The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet

A Novel

mass market paperback, 492 pages

English language

Published Nov. 11, 2011 by Random House Trade Paperbacks.

ISBN:
978-0-8129-7636-6
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OCLC Number:
988465445

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4 stars (1 review)

The year is 1799, the place Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor, the “high-walled, fan-shaped 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 …

3 editions

Subjects

  • East and West
  • Trading posts
  • Fiction
  • History

Places

  • Deshima (Nagasaki-shi, Japan)
  • Japan