Full name: Max Havelaar: Or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company

Author: Multatuli Year: 1860 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Classic, Fiction Purchase/reserch links: Amazon Goodreads LibraryThing ISBNs: 9780140445169 0140445161

Max Havelaar - a Dutch civil servant in Java - burns with an insatiable desire to end the ill treatment and oppression inflicted on the native peoples by the colonial administration. Max is an inspirational figure, but he is also a flawed idealist whose vow to protect the Javanese from cruelty ends in his own downfall. In Max Havelaar, Multatuli (the pseudonym for Eduard Douwes Dekker) vividly recreated his own experiences in Java and tellingly depicts the hypocrisy of those who gained from the corrupt coffee trade. Sending shockwaves through the Dutch nation when it was published in 1860, this damning expose of the terrible conditions in the colonies led to welfare reforms in Java and continues to inspire the fairtrade movement today. Roy Edwards's vibrant translation conveys the satirical and innovative style of Multatuli's autobiographical polemic. In his introduction, R. P. Meijer discusses the author's tempestuous life and career, the controversy the novel aroused and its unusual narrative structure. Similar books: The Hidden Force by Louis Couperus The Tea Lords by Hella S. Haasse Rituals by Cees Nooteboom The Great Longing by Marcel Moring The Evenings by Gerard Reve Ecstasy by Louis Couperus Character by F. Bordewijk The Black Lake by Hella S. Haasse Old People and The Things That Pass by Louis Couperus All Souls Day by Cees Nooteboom East of Eden by John Steinbeck Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger David Copperfield by Charles Dickens Stoner by John Williams Silent Extras by Arnon Grunberg Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers White Noise by Don DeLillo The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy Beyond Sleep by Willem Frederik Hermans