"The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet"
by David Mitchell
Link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Thousand-Autumns-Jacob-Zoet/dp/0340921587/
Reading history and reviews
Finished on 1st July 2012
I think that this might be my favourite David Mitchell book, certainly his best since the brilliant but somewhat uneven Cloud Atlas. There is certainly a lot of meandering in this story of a clerk working for the Dutch East India company in Japan in the late 18th century, but somehow the loose ends and unanswered questions matter less here than in previous stories, and in a way these things feel a bit like real life to me. Throughout Mitchell's writing is wonderfully fluid and the various turns of event kept me hooked until the end, when I was sad that it was finished.