David Mitchell: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

Bookworm

KCRW

Arts

4.5 • 606 Ratings

🗓️ 12 August 2010

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

WEB EXCLUSIVE: Extended interview with David Mitchell

Glowing front-page reviews and profiles proclaim David Mitchell to be "the real thing" and his new novel, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (Random House), a masterpiece.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.
0:07.0	You are a human animal.
0:11.0	You are a very special breed.
0:15.0	Or you are the only animal.
0:18.0	Who can think, who can reason, who can read. From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael
0:26.5	Silverblatt, and welcome to Bookworm. Today I'm very happy to have as my guest, David Mitchell.
0:33.7	The book is The Thousand Autumn of Jacob de Zoot.
0:39.5	It's published by Random House.
0:40.3	Okay.
0:43.3	The year is 1798.
0:45.6	The place is Japan.
0:47.3	The city is Nagasaki.
0:51.6	And there in the bay is a man-made island.
0:53.9	It's not very big. Very few people have seen it. It no longer exists. What was its name, David? It was named Dejima. It was built as a kind of a quarantine station to keep foreigners off Japan, even as they were trading with Japan. They were confined there. And the only three
1:13.1	categories of people allowed on were merchants and translators and prostitutes.
1:17.6	And at that time, the only people allowed to trade with Japan were the Dutch.
1:26.6	The Dutch, yes.
1:28.3	The Spanish and the Portuguese were booted out
1:31.1	because they were too infested in converting souls to Christianity.
1:35.0	The English were allowed to stay for a while,
1:36.9	but they spent all their money on the prostitutes
1:38.7	and couldn't make it pay.
	...

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