The Coffee Trader

I’ve just finished reading (with my husband serving as my personal narrator – lucky me) a wonderful historical novel called The Coffee Trader by David Liss. (No, not the old Milwaukee coffee house on Downer Ave.)

It’s set in Amsterdam in the 1600s as the city was becoming a world leader trading products like whale oil and sugar… and COFFEE. That beverage’s properties of spurring vitality and mental sharpness were not yet fully recognized in Europe. Liss implies that Holland’s – and Europe’s – new commercial golden age was lacking only one thing to really take off: the magic bean.

The novel turns on an entrepreneurial Portuguese Jewish trader who’s escaped the Spanish Inquisition to strive to make his fortune as Amsterdam’s (and the world’s) major importer of coffee (then served only in the city’s one or two Turkish coffee houses).

Liss must have scrupulously researched the world of trading in 17th century Amsterdam – with its “puts” and “holds” and “futures” on sites like the “Bourse” and the “Dam.” Its scenes and language feel fantastically similar to those of our current world of trade.

The whole world came alive to us when we visited Amsterdam’s Jewish Quarter and its magnificent Portuguese Synagogue, “mikvehs” (baths) and meeting rooms, which provide a central backdrop of this book.

The 17th century ideal of Holland as a tolerant home to a thriving Jewish community lives painfully in our minds alongside the WWII events in Anne Frank’s city. The ancient story of exclusion and discrimination plays out poignantly for the book’s readers. Riveting in its history, nuanced characters and freshly relevant subjects, the novel drew us in with its fascinating detail and drama. We loved it!

The Portuguese Synagogue, a major setting of The Coffee Trader