Does a novel about a Dutchman in medieval Japan interest you? No? Well, it should. This is a love story, and its consequences, set against the backdrop of large commercial enterprise gone wrong on a big scale. Sounds like today, doesn't it? Except this is a secret world, where Japanese Shoguns add their own layer of power to that wielded by the Emperor in far off Edo (modern Tokyo) in order to keep Japan cut off from the rest of the world.
Jacob is an innocent abroad, trying to make his fortune whilst maintaining his dignity and honesty in the corrupt world of the failing Dutch East India Company. He makes enemies everywhere, some of whom use his deepening, but forbidden and dangerous, attraction for a local girl against him to bring about his fall. The girl, Orito, is consigned to a closed community of women where she discovers slavery and infanticide.
Jacob and Orito meet again in later life, when destiny has built very different lives for them, and there is no going back. The gentle sadness of their loss is beautifully described as is everything else in this excellent story.
This novel is so full of poetry and the poetic that it glows with soft light and subtle hints that captured my imagination in a way I haven't experienced since I read The Waterbabies as a child. It's a page turner because of its scholarship, poetry, the cleverness of the plotting and the layers of humanity in its characters. Highly recommended.
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