| The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet | |
|---|---|
1st edition |
|
| Author(s) | David Mitchell |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Sceptre |
| Publication date | 13 May 2010 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 480 |
| ISBN | 0340921560 |
| Preceded by | Black Swan Green |
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is the fifth novel published by the author David Mitchell.[1] It is a historical novel set during the Dutch trading concession with Japan in the late 18th century. It begins in the summer of 1799 at the Dutch East Indies Company trading post Dejima in the harbor of Nagasaki and tells the story of a Dutch trader's love for a Japanese midwife who is however spirited away into a sinister mountain temple cult.
The title is a reference to one of the native poetical names for Japan, The Land of a Thousand Autumns.
Mitchell spent four years working on the novel, researching and crafting a vision of 18th century Japan.[1] Small details, such as if people used shaving cream or not, could use up lots of time so that a single sentence could take half a day to write. "It was tough," Mitchell said, "It almost finished me off before I finished it off." [1]
The origins of the novel can be found in 1994 when Mitchell was backpacking in western Japan while on a teaching trip.[1] He had been looking for a cheap lunch in Nagasaki and came upon the Dejima museum. "I never did get the lunch that day," Mitchell said, "but I filled a notebook with information about this place I'd never heard of and resolved one day to write about it."[1]
Some of the events depicted in the novel are based on real history, such as the HMS Phaeton's bombardment of Dejima and subsequent ritual suicide of Nagasaki's Magistrate Matsudaira. The main character, Jacob de Zoet, bears some resemblance to the real-life Hendrik Doeff who wrote a memoir about his time in Dejima.
The novel won the 2011 Commonwealth Writers' Prize regional prize (South Asia and Europe); was long listed for the 2010 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, was one of Time Magazine's "Best Books of the Year" (#4 Fiction),[2] and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.[3]