The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

Resumen del libro

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 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?

Biografía del autor

David Mitchell was born in Southport in January, 1969.<br><br>His first novel, Ghostwritten (1999), won the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for the best book by a writer under 35 and was also shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award.<br><br>His second novel, number9dream, was shortlisted for the 2001 Booker Prize as well as the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.<br><br>His third novel, Cloud Atlas, was shortlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize. He has since published Black Swan Green (longlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize) and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (longisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize). His most recent book, The Bone Clocks, is longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2014.<br><br>In 2003 he was selected as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists.<br><br>David Mitchell now lives in Ireland.