The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell (Random House, 2010)
Epic in scope and ambitious in setting, this novel is set in 1799 in Nagasaki Harbor, Japan, at the farthest outpost of the Dutch East Indies Company and features a devout Dutch clerk – a “shogun’s hostage” -- who falls in love with a native midwife who is kidnapped and taken to a secret shrine and forced to serve as a sex slave. The story that unravels over the next 20 years is sometimes difficult to follow as it is disjointed and overloaded with exotic and conflicting characters engaged in fractured and off-shooting storylines (7/10).
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