Apr 18

Written by: Auckland Writers & Readers Festival
Monday, Apr 18, 2011

Author of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, David Mitchell, recently spoke to The New Zealand Herald about his love of islands, which is great because he'll be returning to this one in May for the Festival.

Mitchell told the Herald: "Islands are controllable...there's no vastness on an island. The perplexity of vastness isn't something that troubles you on an island. In a way, a novel is an island as well. It's got its own shores and borders and a horrible little tyrant rules over it and says what goes on."

He also went on to talk about the protagonist from his novel, Jacob de Zoet, who orgininates from Zeeland, saying that de Zoet should have been an Amersterdammer, but was inspired after an invitation to visit Zeeland for a concert.

"Certainly in the British Isles, everybody knows New Zealand much more than old Zeeland. They might be hard-pushed to say where old Zeeland is or to find it on a map. That makes it an anti-cliche. It's also such a great landscape. You get great skies there and it's so flat. All of the Netherlands is flat but Zeeland is like the Netherlands with knobs on. "

You can read the full article on the Herald's website.

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