Why a Booktrail?
1659 – Wake up and smell the coffee and read this book before it’s too late! Takes you back to 1650s Amsterdam and the weird and wonderful world of the coffee trade.
The Coffee Trader
What you need to know before your trail
David Liss travels back in time to the world of trade and financial mysteries of 1659 Amsterdam.
On the world’s first commodities exchange, fortunes are won and lost in an instant. One of the merchants there has lost everything in the changing sugar markets and he must now fight to stay afloat in every sense of the word.
A seductive Dutchwoman who offers him one last chance at success — a daring plot to corner the market of an astonishing new commodity – “coffee.”
But coffee is as yet unknown .. but betrayal and chaos certainly are known.
Betrayal lurks everywhere, even in places you would not think to look.
Travel Guide
Essential to have a cup of coffee or two to hand before reading this novel as you will be craving it before too long!
This book can even be described as a very rich blend of complex intertwining flavours as there is a mixture of tastes – a full sense of the rich financial underpinnings of the markets at the time, a bitter undercurrent of hostility between traders and the dregs at the bottom of the cup whereby the cast of rich, well developed characters try to hide their failings and treacherous deeds.
Beer and wine may make a man sleepy but coffee will make him awake and clearheaded…
There are three main canals which make up the centre of the city – There’s the Herengracht or ‘‘the lord’s Canal’’, The Keizersgracht or ‘’Emperor’s Canal’’ and the Prinsengracht or the ‘’Prince’s Canal’. Canalsleading from the port where the trade of coffee would have been at its peak. All perfect for wandering and imagining yourself in the novel!
“Coffee is the drink of commerce”
This was a real eye opener as you learn a lot from this novel regarding the practice of Judaism at the time, both within Western Europe and in Amsterdam. With references to coffee of course –
“He had used coffee to banish them the way a great Rabbi uses the Torah to banish demons”
Amsterdam and the coffee trade comes alive before your very eyes.
Where Next?
