The year is 1799, the place Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor, the
Japanese Empire’s single port and sole window onto the
world, designed to keep the West at bay. To this place of
devious merchants, deceitful interpreters, and costly
courtesans comes Jacob de Zoet, a devout 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 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 of which will extend beyond Jacob’s worst
imaginings.
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