The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet - Tapa dura

Compared with almost everything being written now, it is vertiginously ambitious - and brilliant...He can write as thrillingly about large-scale events as he can about the tiny details of the private world. Such fluent and masterful command of both domains seems the stuff of a true artist's gifts The Times Unquestionably a marvel - entirely original among contemporary British novels, revealing its author as, surely, the most impressive fictional mind of his generation Observer Mitchell gives us a world of stories in prose that brings a lump to the throat...dive in and lose yourself in a world of incredible scope, originality and imaginative brilliance. David Mitchell has done it again. Independent on Sunday Spectacularly accomplished and thrillingly suspenseful...it brims with rich, involving and affecting humanity. Sunday Times Arguably his finest...Every sentence yields glorious surprises that no one else could think up...It will doubtless earn Mitchell his fourth Man Booker nomination and, if there's any justice, his first win. Sunday Telegraph However densely charted and richly sketched, this sumptuous imbroglio never drags...Mitchell flexes his prose virtuosity. More than before, those muscles do the heart's work. Independent Hugely enjoyable...the descriptions of Dejima and what life there must have been like are extraordinarily accurate Literary Review David Mitchell is back with a bang...superb Irish Independent For a tour de force, it's surprisingly nimble, emotionally complex and simply unforgettable. Scotland on Sunday 'Ambitious and fascinating...Comparisons to Tolstoy are inevitable, and right on the money.' Kirkus Reviews A masterpiece Scotsman My favourite new novel of the year, by a very long way ... People will still be marvelling at THE THOUSAND AUTUMNS OF JACOB DE ZOET decades after last year's award winners have been forgotten. Gary Dalkin, Vector, Books of the Year

THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER David Mitchell's novels have captivated critics and readers alike, as his Man Booker shortlistings and Richard & Judy Book of the Year award attest. Now he has written a masterpiece. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is the kind of book that comes along once in a decade - enthralling in its storytelling, imagination and scope. Set at a turning point in history on a tiny island attached to mainland Japan, David Mitchell's tale of power, passion and integrity transports us to a world that is at once exotic and familiar: an extraordinary place and an era when news from abroad took months to arrive, yet when people behaved as they always do - loving, lusting and yearning, cheating, fighting and killing. Bringing to vivid life a tectonic shift between East and West, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is dramatic, funny, heartbreaking, enlightening and thought-provoking. Reading it is an unforgettable experience.