I'm not really a fan of historical fiction but recently had to read this book for a class. It's entitled "The thousand autumns of Jacob de Zoet" by David Mitchell and it's absolutely fascinating. Aside from all the intrigue and charges of over-romanticizing oriental culture, Mitchell deftly depicts in stunning clarity the extraterritorial transnational spaces that existed in the seventeenth century. These were essentially trading posts on artificial islands on colonized lands such as Java and governed by companies such as the Dutch East India Company. The text depicts this in-between space where the sovereignty of the nation state and state laws become ambiguous and fuzzy.
Monday, September 19, 2011
The thousand autumns of Jacob de Zoet
I'm not really a fan of historical fiction but recently had to read this book for a class. It's entitled "The thousand autumns of Jacob de Zoet" by David Mitchell and it's absolutely fascinating. Aside from all the intrigue and charges of over-romanticizing oriental culture, Mitchell deftly depicts in stunning clarity the extraterritorial transnational spaces that existed in the seventeenth century. These were essentially trading posts on artificial islands on colonized lands such as Java and governed by companies such as the Dutch East India Company. The text depicts this in-between space where the sovereignty of the nation state and state laws become ambiguous and fuzzy.
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