The Coffee Trader
The Coffee Trader by David Liss is a grand tale of business intrigue in the unlikely setting of Amsterdam in 1659. It follows the fortunes of a Portugese Jew, Miguel Lienzo, who plots a coup on the local stock exchange.
Coffee was relatively unknown in Europe at that time and Miguel punts that it will become popular.
He forms a partnership with a seductive Dutch woman who provides the finance, as Miguel has mounting debts following a failed investment in sugar futures.
He strives to keep his plans confidential from rival Jewish merchants and the all-powerful Dutch East India Company.
“A story of subterfuge, danger and repressed longing, set in a city where betrayal lurks everywhere and even friends have hidden agenda,” is the accurate cover description.
Tension, conflict and suspense are key ingredients for a good novel and this book has them all. Miguel relies on his brother’s charity, but there is no love lost between them. A former client with a grudge stalks him, a Jewish community leader is out to destroy him and his brother’s wife tempts him.
A Jew exiled from the close-knit community, Alonzo Alferonda, provides inspiration for Miguel’s scheme. The author uses this character as a background narrator, which I found irritating at first but fascinating at the finish.
Miguel wins the day, but the riches aren’t as great as he originally hoped. He also wins his brother’s wife. In victory though he destroys his business partner and the disgruntled client, to whom he’d become reconciled.
Amsterdam’s stock exhange at the time was the greatest in the world. Holland was then the most tolerant part of Europe, which was torn between Catholic and Protestant hostility.
I found the historical setting particularly interesting. It’s a period I’ve read widely about, but not from a Dutch perspective before.
The story flows well; the prose is concise and easy to follow. The suspense builds dramatically and there’s a twist at the finish.
Something I found most irritating was the large number of typographical errors. This was a 2003 edition, published by Abacus. Most books have no typing errors and it’s rare to come across more than one or two. I lost count of the mistakes in this book and think there must have been at least a dozen, including two on one page. That’s not good enough.
Partly for that reason, and partly because something was missing, I’ve rated this book three stars instead of four.
What was missing? It’s hard to put my finger on this, but the historical setting didn’t quite seem real enough. I almost felt it could have been Amsterdam at any point in the last 350 years instead of 1659.
The research was thorough, but perhaps the author focused too much on the stock exchange and coffee at the expense of everyday life at the time. That’s a harsh criticism given my vagueness, made on feeling rather than logic.
I'm a 41-year-old father of four working as a newspaper editor at Mount Gambier in South Australia.
