--- product_id: 4567709 title: "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: A Novel" price: "¥3949" currency: JPY in_stock: true reviews_count: 13 url: https://www.desertcart.jp/products/4567709-the-thousand-autumns-of-jacob-de-zoet-a-novel store_origin: JP region: Japan --- # The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: A Novel **Price:** ¥3949 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: A Novel - **How much does it cost?** ¥3949 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.jp](https://www.desertcart.jp/products/4567709-the-thousand-autumns-of-jacob-de-zoet-a-novel) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description By the New York Times bestselling author of The Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas | Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize The year is 1799, the place Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor, the Japanese Empire’s single port and sole window onto the world, designed to keep the West at bay. To this place of devious merchants, deceitful interpreters, and costly courtesans comes Jacob de Zoet, a devout 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 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 of which will extend beyond Jacob’s worst imaginings. Review: Astonishing, moving historical fiction and rich characterization make this a masterpiece - Given that the only book by David Mitchell that I had read before was Cloud Atlas, I wasn't quite sure what to expect from The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet - I knew it was widely regarded, but little more than that, not even the setting. (And, from what I've read, it's not quite as genre-bending as some of Mitchell's other works, so it may not have been a representative choice from his works.) What I got, in many ways, couldn't be more different from Cloud Atlas, but it's no less beautiful, powerful, and astonishingly well-written, and by the time I finished it, I knew I had read another masterpiece from Mitchell. A historical fiction, Thousand Autumns details the lives of officers in the Dutch East Indies company stationed near Nagasaki right around the dawn of the 19th century. That's a wholly, utterly foreign world to most Western readers, and much of the book's first section finds Mitchell exploring the culture and society through his characters, letting the world come to life as he subtly sows seeds for the plot threads to come. And then, before you know it, you're lost in Mitchell's rich world, entranced by his complicated, utterly human characters, and caught up in his dense plotting, which involves everything from the British empire to a sect of Japanese monks with horrific beliefs. And just when you think Mitchell has lost track of everything, he pulls it together in two astonishing final chapters that left me stunned, moved, and on the verge of tears at his powerful ending. But the plotting is never really the focus of Thousand Autumns; what fascinates Mitchell, and by extension, the reader, are the characters that populate the world, and the way they're governed by their pasts, their cultures, their senses of honor and betrayal, and a desire to make the most of their lives as best as they can. What Mitchell ends up doing here is telling a story that could be told at no other time in history, but making it beautifully, wonderfully contemporary in the emotions and feelings it deals with. More than that, he succeeds in immersing you in a world that you could never experience, and makes it come to life in such a vivid way that you not only picture it, but can feel yourself getting lost in it. And that, along with Mitchell's astonishing, beautiful prose, makes Thousand Autumns a masterpiece worth savoring. Review: Intriguing page turner that comes up a bit short - (Caution: some spoilers ahead) I thought the first 200 or so pages of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet were absolutely brilliant: Mitchell succeeded precisely by dismissing any suspicions or expectations that his story would be a reheated version of the novel that--for better or for worse--has become the archetype of historical fiction written about Japan by non-Japanese: Shogun. Where Shogun is expansive, Thousand Autumns starts off delightfully claustrophobic; whereas Shogun's protagonist quickly becomes a Japanophile, gains entry into the inaccessible and the exotic, and sets off on a series of adventures, Thousand Autumns' protagonist is--although intelligent and likable--clearly out of his element, lacking in power amongst his own people let alone a foreign race, and more observer than participant. By creating a story about Dejima (rather than "Japan" per se) that is both as inward-looking and in-between worlds as that tiny island, Mitchell quickly finds his own voice and creates a unique story very different than Shogun and focused on universal and timeless issues like race, power, and faith. Looking back, I found the beating of Sjako--the reasons for it, the reactions to it--in many ways to be among the most impactful and passionate sections of the entire book: full of deeper meaning, demanding of the reader's introspection, and--brilliantly, and unconventionally for this genre--having completely nothing to do with "Japan". Then, abruptly, Mitchell abandons his sympathetic protagonist and the nuanced confines of Dejima (the island becomes a character in its own right) for a good 200 pages to focus on the Orito-in-captivity story. If the first part of the novel was an interesting expansion of The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing from Cloud Atlas, the second part was an oddly flat retelling of An Orison of Sonmi-451 from the same tale, without the nuance or deeper meaning. I found myself bewildered by Enomoto and the infanticide plot line ... it touched upon some of the recurring motifs of faith, power, and oppression but not in a convincing or compelling manner. Enomoto feels like a cardboard cutout villain, the "good guys" like Orito and Ogawa are oddly impotent and less interesting as main protagonists compared to the supporting roles they previously held, and the whole strange storyline seemed to drag on unnecessarily long. Moreover, despite being set in "normal" Japan with a cast of Japanese characters, the whole part felt jarringly un-Japanese. The setting could have been a monastery in Europe, the characters talked, acted, and thought distinctly in a European fashion despite clumsy attempts to "orientalize" things. Creating a believable world and realistic characters doing reasonable things in it is a big challenge with historical fiction, and Mitchell is usually spot-on in this regard; in this case, it just did not come together or ring true. I was happy to get back to de Zoet in the last third of the novel, but this new de Zoet felt more like someone out of Clavell's tale: heroic, powerful, master of Japanese language and custom. Mitchell wrapped up loose ends fairly well and adopts a somber tone of melancholia suitable for the final plot twists and turns ... but at the end of the journey, he still leaves the reader feeling a bit unfulfilled. Most of my comments about the book have been fairly negative. Yet, it was a page-turner; even when I could see where Mitchell was going, I still enjoyed being taken along for the ride. de Zoet was, overall, an interesting and thoughtful protagonist. Yet, it just seemed fairly predictable and conventional in the end--it was like eating a meal that is good enough, but you keep waiting for that extra little something to make it special and memorable. Perhaps Cloud Atlas just raised my expectations too high--honestly, if I didn't know better, I'd have thought Thousand Autumns was his earlier work, not Cloud Atlas. After all, in the latter, Mitchell essentially weaves together *six* historical fiction novels (some of the "history" just happens to be in the future). In comparison, this just feels a bit less ambitious and lacking in its ability to live up to its potential: Mitchell had a chance to transform the genre; instead he seems to just conform to it. Cloud Atlas grabbed my heart and stimulated my brain; Thousand Autumns kept me more or less entertained, but the fact that I did not end up enjoying it as much as I truly hoped I would left me feeling a little betrayed and disappointed. I debated between three and four stars, but decided to round up in the end--not a bad novel by any means, but perhaps a victim of my lofty expectations. ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #117,821 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #814 in Historical British & Irish Literature #2,771 in Historical Romances #4,040 in Literary Fiction (Books) | | Customer Reviews | 4.4 out of 5 stars 5,328 Reviews | ## Images ![The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: A Novel - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/814QgHATIsL.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Astonishing, moving historical fiction and rich characterization make this a masterpiece *by J***E on March 21, 2013* Given that the only book by David Mitchell that I had read before was Cloud Atlas, I wasn't quite sure what to expect from The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet - I knew it was widely regarded, but little more than that, not even the setting. (And, from what I've read, it's not quite as genre-bending as some of Mitchell's other works, so it may not have been a representative choice from his works.) What I got, in many ways, couldn't be more different from Cloud Atlas, but it's no less beautiful, powerful, and astonishingly well-written, and by the time I finished it, I knew I had read another masterpiece from Mitchell. A historical fiction, Thousand Autumns details the lives of officers in the Dutch East Indies company stationed near Nagasaki right around the dawn of the 19th century. That's a wholly, utterly foreign world to most Western readers, and much of the book's first section finds Mitchell exploring the culture and society through his characters, letting the world come to life as he subtly sows seeds for the plot threads to come. And then, before you know it, you're lost in Mitchell's rich world, entranced by his complicated, utterly human characters, and caught up in his dense plotting, which involves everything from the British empire to a sect of Japanese monks with horrific beliefs. And just when you think Mitchell has lost track of everything, he pulls it together in two astonishing final chapters that left me stunned, moved, and on the verge of tears at his powerful ending. But the plotting is never really the focus of Thousand Autumns; what fascinates Mitchell, and by extension, the reader, are the characters that populate the world, and the way they're governed by their pasts, their cultures, their senses of honor and betrayal, and a desire to make the most of their lives as best as they can. What Mitchell ends up doing here is telling a story that could be told at no other time in history, but making it beautifully, wonderfully contemporary in the emotions and feelings it deals with. More than that, he succeeds in immersing you in a world that you could never experience, and makes it come to life in such a vivid way that you not only picture it, but can feel yourself getting lost in it. And that, along with Mitchell's astonishing, beautiful prose, makes Thousand Autumns a masterpiece worth savoring. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Intriguing page turner that comes up a bit short *by C***S on January 30, 2013* (Caution: some spoilers ahead) I thought the first 200 or so pages of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet were absolutely brilliant: Mitchell succeeded precisely by dismissing any suspicions or expectations that his story would be a reheated version of the novel that--for better or for worse--has become the archetype of historical fiction written about Japan by non-Japanese: Shogun. Where Shogun is expansive, Thousand Autumns starts off delightfully claustrophobic; whereas Shogun's protagonist quickly becomes a Japanophile, gains entry into the inaccessible and the exotic, and sets off on a series of adventures, Thousand Autumns' protagonist is--although intelligent and likable--clearly out of his element, lacking in power amongst his own people let alone a foreign race, and more observer than participant. By creating a story about Dejima (rather than "Japan" per se) that is both as inward-looking and in-between worlds as that tiny island, Mitchell quickly finds his own voice and creates a unique story very different than Shogun and focused on universal and timeless issues like race, power, and faith. Looking back, I found the beating of Sjako--the reasons for it, the reactions to it--in many ways to be among the most impactful and passionate sections of the entire book: full of deeper meaning, demanding of the reader's introspection, and--brilliantly, and unconventionally for this genre--having completely nothing to do with "Japan". Then, abruptly, Mitchell abandons his sympathetic protagonist and the nuanced confines of Dejima (the island becomes a character in its own right) for a good 200 pages to focus on the Orito-in-captivity story. If the first part of the novel was an interesting expansion of The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing from Cloud Atlas, the second part was an oddly flat retelling of An Orison of Sonmi-451 from the same tale, without the nuance or deeper meaning. I found myself bewildered by Enomoto and the infanticide plot line ... it touched upon some of the recurring motifs of faith, power, and oppression but not in a convincing or compelling manner. Enomoto feels like a cardboard cutout villain, the "good guys" like Orito and Ogawa are oddly impotent and less interesting as main protagonists compared to the supporting roles they previously held, and the whole strange storyline seemed to drag on unnecessarily long. Moreover, despite being set in "normal" Japan with a cast of Japanese characters, the whole part felt jarringly un-Japanese. The setting could have been a monastery in Europe, the characters talked, acted, and thought distinctly in a European fashion despite clumsy attempts to "orientalize" things. Creating a believable world and realistic characters doing reasonable things in it is a big challenge with historical fiction, and Mitchell is usually spot-on in this regard; in this case, it just did not come together or ring true. I was happy to get back to de Zoet in the last third of the novel, but this new de Zoet felt more like someone out of Clavell's tale: heroic, powerful, master of Japanese language and custom. Mitchell wrapped up loose ends fairly well and adopts a somber tone of melancholia suitable for the final plot twists and turns ... but at the end of the journey, he still leaves the reader feeling a bit unfulfilled. Most of my comments about the book have been fairly negative. Yet, it was a page-turner; even when I could see where Mitchell was going, I still enjoyed being taken along for the ride. de Zoet was, overall, an interesting and thoughtful protagonist. Yet, it just seemed fairly predictable and conventional in the end--it was like eating a meal that is good enough, but you keep waiting for that extra little something to make it special and memorable. Perhaps Cloud Atlas just raised my expectations too high--honestly, if I didn't know better, I'd have thought Thousand Autumns was his earlier work, not Cloud Atlas. After all, in the latter, Mitchell essentially weaves together *six* historical fiction novels (some of the "history" just happens to be in the future). In comparison, this just feels a bit less ambitious and lacking in its ability to live up to its potential: Mitchell had a chance to transform the genre; instead he seems to just conform to it. Cloud Atlas grabbed my heart and stimulated my brain; Thousand Autumns kept me more or less entertained, but the fact that I did not end up enjoying it as much as I truly hoped I would left me feeling a little betrayed and disappointed. I debated between three and four stars, but decided to round up in the end--not a bad novel by any means, but perhaps a victim of my lofty expectations. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A Must-Read *by J***S on January 18, 2012* What books qualify for must-reads? I prefer books with a compelling story and excellent writing. Sometimes I'll read books that lack one of these two qualities, but to make it to my must-read list, I require both. David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is a definite must-read. What a title! Upon reading it, you might turn away and select something else, but if you do, you've missed a wonderfully written story. Mitchell begins the book in 1799 on a small island outside of Japan, Dijima. This island is the only place where the then extremely isolated Japanese allowed trading with the outside world (the Dutch in particular). Our main character, Jacob de Zoet, arrived from a small town in Holland to make his fortune and a name for himself so he could marry his sweetheart. Many things conspire against our hero. First, he takes a huge risk when he decides to smuggle in a Psalter (a Christian book). The Japanese forbade any Christian relics, particularly books, crucifixes, rituals, etc. They were not interested in being overrun by missionaries or other outsiders trying to upturn their own beliefs. If Jacob were found with this offending item, he could have been tossed in the brink. Jacob kept the book because it belonged to his great grandfather. It was something he didn't think he could live without. At this stage of the book, we've learned two things about our character: risk-taker and strong beliefs. Fortunately for him, he made friends with the chief translator who ignored the book in exchange for lessons on the Dutch language. Mitchell develops the story around fascinating characters, including an interesting young Japanese woman who excelled as a midwife. The story reveals much about the Japanese culture during this early part of the 19th Century. It also reveals much about the Dutch merchants. If you want to read a compelling story with characters whom you'll warm to and with a bit of history about a part of the world most people have never heard of, this book is a must-read. Furthermore, Mitchell writes with the skill of a master. The language in the dialogue is superb and matches the language of the time. He juggles three languages--Japanese or Dutch or English--without imposing uncomfortable dialects. The plot moves fast and just when you think everything will work out, boom, something else happens. My only complaint was with the ending. Not in the form of an epilogue, it was written as such. Yes, we readers want to know what happened to everyone. Instead of carrying us through the saga Mitchell tells as might a news reporter. My guess is he grew tired of the story. As a reader, I wasn't tired and would have loved to have "seen" more. Nonetheless, you'll finish The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet wishing for more and sorry to turn the last page of a wonderful book. . . ## Frequently Bought Together - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: A Novel - Cloud Atlas: A Novel - The Bone Clocks: A Novel --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.jp/products/4567709-the-thousand-autumns-of-jacob-de-zoet-a-novel](https://www.desertcart.jp/products/4567709-the-thousand-autumns-of-jacob-de-zoet-a-novel) --- *Product available on Desertcart Japan* *Store origin: JP* *Last updated: 2026-09-19*