In 2007, Time magazine named him one of the most influential novelists in the world. He has twice been short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. The New York Times Book Review called him simply “a genius.” Now David Mitchell lends fresh credence to The Guardian ’s claim that “each of his books seems entirely different from that which preceded it.” The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is a stunning departure for this brilliant, restless, and wildly ambitious author, a giant leap forward by even his own high standards. A bold and epic novel of a rarely visited point in history, it is a work as exquisitely rendered as it is irresistibly readable.

The year is 1799, the place Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor, the “high-walled, fan-shaped artificial island” that is the Japanese Empire’s single port and sole window onto the world, designed to keep the West at bay; the farthest outpost of the war-ravaged Dutch East Indies Company; and a de facto prison for the dozen foreigners permitted to live and work there. To this place of devious merchants, deceitful interpreters, costly courtesans, earthquakes, and typhoons comes Jacob de Zoet, a devout and resourceful 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 daughter of a samurai doctor and 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 will extend beyond Jacob’s worst imaginings. As one cynical colleague asks, “Who ain’t a gambler in the glorious Orient, with his very life?”

A magnificent mix of luminous writing, prodigious research, and heedless imagination, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is the most impressive achievement of its eminent author.

大衛·米切爾是英國著名作傢，歐美文學界公認的新一代小說大師。1969年生於英格蘭伍斯特郡，在肯特大學主修英美文學、比較文學。曾在日本廣島擔任工程係學生的英文教師八年。米切爾博采村上春樹、奧斯特、卡爾維諾、博爾赫斯諸大師作品之所長，自成一派，其作波詭雲譎，靈氣無窮。處女作《幽靈代筆》（1999）轟動歐美文學界，榮獲萊斯文學奬，入圍《衛報》處女作奬決選；《九號夢》（2001）入圍布剋奬決選，米切爾也因此書被評為英國最佳青年小說傢；《雲圖》（2004）榮膺英國國傢圖書奬最佳小說奬和理查與茱蒂讀書俱樂部年度選書，同時入圍布剋奬、星雲奬、剋拉剋奬決選；《綠野黑天鵝》（2006）獲得美國圖書館協會最佳青少年圖書和《學校圖書館報》最佳圖書稱號，入圍科斯塔圖書奬和《洛杉磯時報》圖書奬；《雅各布·德佐特的一韆個鞦天》（2010）問鼎英聯邦作傢奬。米切爾小說原創性十足，為二十一世紀英語小說開啓瞭全新的模式與風貌。2007年，以傑齣的文學成就被美國《時代》雜誌評為“世界100位最具影響力的人物”之一。