The Coffee Trader - Softcover

David Liss

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0349115001 ISBN 13: 9780349115009

Publisher: Abacus, 2003

Synopsis

Amsterdam in the 1690s - a boom town with Europe's biggest stock exchange and traders who will stop at nothing to get even richer. Lienzo, a Portugese Jew, stumbles across a new commodity - coffee - which, if he plays his cards right, will make him the richest man in Holland. But others stand in his way - rival traders who do all in their power to confuse the exchange and scupper his plans, his brother who is jealous of his financial wizardry and even his brother's beautiful wife who both tempts and spurns him in equal measure.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Advance praise for The Coffee Trader

“A novel overflowing with intrigue and duplicity . . . Once you’ve wandered the back alleys of Amsterdam with David Liss, you’ll never look at your morning cup of coffee the same way again!” —Sheri Holman, author of The Dress Lodger and The Mammoth Cheese

“In his second novel, David Liss creates his own genre: the historical noir. The seventeenth-century Amsterdam he depicts is a wonderfully dark city of secrets, roiling with deceitful maneuverings and caffeine-fueled perils. The Coffee Trader is vivid, utterly absorbing, and more than a little relevant to our current age of financial skulduggery.”—Gary Krist, author of Extravagance

“It feels as if David Liss has traveled through time to the stock exchange of seventeenth-century Amsterdam and the immigrant society of Dutch Jews who were forced to reinvent their religion after the ravages of the Inquisition. The Coffee Trader is riveting as a historical re-creation, compelling as a tale, and relevant both about the morality of community—in this case, Jewish community—and about the ethical corruptions of an economy where value is a function of perception, competition, and, above all, manipulation.” —Neil Gordon, author of Sacrifice of Isaac and Sea of Green

“Masterfully plotted, brilliantly imagined, The Coffee Trader brims with intelligence, intrigue, and suspense. David Liss has written a riveting novel about commerce and faith, loyalty and greed.”—Tova Mirvis, author of The Ladies Auxiliary
From the Hardcover edition.

From the Inside Flap

ard–winning novel A Conspiracy of Paper was one of the most acclaimed debuts of 2000. In his richly suspenseful second novel, author David Liss once again travels back in time to a crucial moment in cultural and financial history. His destination: Amsterdam, 1659—a mysterious world of trade populated by schemers and rogues, where deception rules the day.

On the world’s first commodities exchange, fortunes are won and lost in an instant. Miguel Lienzo, a sharp-witted trader in the city’s close-knit community of Portuguese Jews, knows this only too well. Once among the city’s most envied merchants, Miguel has lost everything in a sudden shift in the sugar markets. Now, impoverished and humiliated, living on the charity of his petty younger brother, Miguel must find a way to restore his wealth and reputation.

Miguel enters into a partnership with a seduc-tive Dutchwoman who offers him one last chance at success—a daring plot to co

Edition details

• Publisher: Abacus
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0349115001
• ISBN 13: 9780349115009
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 400