So Mitchell needs us to be interested in his characters. We’ve been here, or somewhere rather like it, in plenty of other novels. The world we’re being shown is believable in its detail but, so far, most of what Mitchell is telling us seems a bit obvious. But how would I know? The hierarchy of Japanese society is perfectly believable, but hardly unexpected – and when Mitchell hints at parallels with the strata of European society, complete with its slaves, there’s nothing to make us uncomfortable. Mitchell seems to be making a convincing job of creating the world of these Europeans on their tiny walled island, trading uneasily with Japan under the Shoguns. So far, I’m not massively bothered by any of it. Early on we witness the drumhead trial of one of the company’s agents, but all the men Jacob has to work with afterwards look back to his time with nostalgia. People make up their salaries by constantly creaming off, adjusting figures, giving and taking bribes. Jacob is in Japan to help his superiors clean up the corruption, but he’s having a difficult time because the ethos of the company, certainly at the level he’s dealing with, is based on it. Mitchell has placed him in the Dutch East India Company which, at the end of the troubling first decade of the 21st, he seems to be using as an archetype of capitalism in all its ravening ugliness.

I’m about a quarter of the way through and, except in the first chapter, we’re with a resourceful shipping clerk making his way in 1799.

The thousand autumns