ABSTRACT
David Mitchell's new novel is set on and around an artificial island called Dejima, constructed in the bay of Nagasaki to house representatives of the Vereenigde Oest-Indische Compagnie, the sole official conduit for European trade with Japan during almost all of the rule of the Tokugawa Shoguns. The narrative periodically changes location but only to similarly constrained places: the walled and guarded magistracy in Nagasaki; a gated family compound; an English frigate, all stifling passageways and stinking underdecks; a sinister closed nunnery within a sinister closed shrine. The Dutch brought medical advances to Japan and Mitchell seizes the opportunity for grotesquerie: the novel begins with an intimately described forceps birth; later, an ape scampers hither and thither holding 'an amputated shin with ankle and foot attached'. Mitchell flaunts his skill in pastiche, matching his different situations to genres including nuclear thrillers and Asimov-inspired sci-fi. Events crowd in, melodrama flourishes: nothing ordinary is allowed to happen for long.
