The Coffee Trader Add a review

The Coffee Trader is a historical novel by David Liss, set in 17th-century Amsterdam. The story revolves around the activities of commodity trader Miguel Lienzo, who is a Jewish refugee from the Portuguese Inquisition. Recovering from near financial ruin, he embarks on a coffee trading scheme with a Dutch woman, kept secret because it is forbidden by his community council. Miguel navigates the social structures of the Amsterdam business world, the politics of the council, and the plots of competitors bringing this new import to Europe.

The character of Miguel Lienzo is the great-uncle of Benjamin Weaver, the protagonist of Liss's first novel, A Conspiracy of Paper. This novel is set about 60 years earlier, but is not a prequel; as stated by Liss, Miguel Lienzo is a very different kind of character from the English great-nephew whom he would never meet.

The book has been published in translation into Chinese, Danish, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese and Turkish.