Up the Creek Book Club

Home Page

Current Book List

Prior Book Lists

King County Library

Barnes & Noble

Amazon.com

The Coffee Trader

by David Liss

August 2009

Synopsis

The Coffee Trader "Amsterdam, 1659: 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 suddenly lost everything. Now, impoverished and humiliated, living in his younger brother’s canal-flooded basement, Miguel must find a way to restore his wealth and reputation.

Miguel enters into a partnership with a seductive Dutchwoman who offers him one last chance at success—a daring plot to corner the market of an astonishing new commodity called "coffee". To succeed, Miguel must risk everything he values and face a powerful enemy who will stop at nothing to see him ruined. Miguel will learn that among Amsterdam’s ruthless businessmen, betrayal lurks everywhere, and even friends hide secret agendas." (Publisher)

Reviews

" That sense of characters being subject to forces they cannot master is, in fact, the great strength of The Coffee Trader, as it was of A Conspiracy of Paper. Liss's novels are ultimately about a central truth of capitalism, which is that the system is bigger and more powerful than anyone within it. Sometimes that works to a trader's advantage, as he reaps an unplanned windfall, and sometimes it destroys him. In either case, whatever security he has is tenuous. The best moments of The Coffee Trader create a powerful sense of vertigo that's something like the vertigo of finance capitalism, where is there no end to the trading and no firm foundation, just an ever-receding spiral of value. " (The Washington Post)

Book Club Rating and Comments

If you or your book club has read this book and would like to share your comments, please email us at upthecreekbc@yahoo.com.

Other Books by David Liss

'A Conspiracy of Paper'