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In the seventeenth century, Dutch seafarers brought back reports of journeys to the East Indies, a realm of more than 3,000 islands that for over three centuries would be under Dutch rule. The twelve-volume Library of the Indies presents in English translation, with critical introductions and notes, a substantial body of the literature that arose from the Dutch encounter with the tropical Indies. Fugitive Dreams is the final volume in the Library of the Indies. It presents a selection of creative and critical writings by eight authors who span the Dutch colonial presence in Indonesia, ranging around 1600 to the beginning of the Second World War. The authors are Willem Bontekoe, Alexander Coen, Franz Wilhelm Junghuhn, Kartini, Herman Neubroner van der Turk, Francois Valentijn, Bas Veth, and Willem Walraven. The translated texts are accompanied by essays by E.M. Beekman on such topics as Holland's maritime history, seventeenth-century intellectual life, the life of the ordinary foot soldier in the colonial army, the first Javanese advocate of women's rights, and the beauty of the tropics.

This book is the definitive literary history of the colonial Dutch East Indies and is partially distinguished from its predecessors by its discussion of materials ranging from natural history and religious sermons to pamphlets and the accounts of travelers from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries. What emerges from this comprehensive approach is an unusually thorough and sensitive account of the manifold encounters of the Dutch with the East Indian societies that they conquered, tried to understand, and, finally, had to relinquish under the inevitable pressures of change and the desire for independence. This history records how a hybrid literature emerges from that of the colonial culture to become a distinct literature of its own and why the concepts derived from European cultural history--such as baroque or neoclassicism--are totally inapplicable to the works discussed here.

The Hidden Force is a 1900 novel by the Dutch writer, L. Couperus. In the novel, the protagonist, Van Oudijck, a Dutch resident, faces his own demise as a result of his inability to see past his Western rationalism. The East Indian people and countryside have no effect on him, and the ambiance of Java, coupled with the adverse behavior of their Javanese subjects, prove more powerful than the might and power of the colonials.

The islands described in this highly original collection of stories are divorced from the particularities of locale. They are a symbolic setting for those whom Herman Melville called "isolatoes"--people who live with constant loneliness, who occasionally break out of it, but who often encounter tragedy when they make an attempt. With a taut prose style, Alberts treats the modern theme of estrangement in memorable tales of discovery, surprise, death, and love. Equal to the highest standards of contemporary fiction, the stories in this book bring to the English-speaking world the writing of one of the outstanding Dutch writers of Indonesia.

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Written by one of the most realistic colonial authors of his time, his naturalistic novel presents a vivid portrait of colonial life on the island of Java in the late ninteenth-century. P.A. Daum (1850-98) was editor of popular newspaper in central Java. In 1883 he began to write novels under the pseudonym "Maurits" and serialized them in his paper. Over a ten year period he produced ten novels, all of them written in unadorned style and concerned with the vicissitudes of Dutch colonial life. His work is known for its direct style, sense of humor, and psychological portraiture. He is a perceptive observer with an eye for detail and a fine ear for the rhythms of speech in the East Indies.