Oeroeg by Hella S. Haasse6/20/2023 ![]() The years in Holland, important as they had been, counted for less than my childhood and schooldays over there.Įxcept for that final sentence, every statement here by this well-intentioned, sensible, essentially unremarkable young man betrays tragic wrongheadedness. My wish to return to the Indies and work there arose primarily from a deep-seated sense of commitment to the country where I had been born and brought up. The "colonial" way of thinking so often criticised-rightly or wrongly-in postwar Holland was not something I identified with. Hans Hylkema Writers Trevor Griffiths Hella S. In her first novella, Oeroeg (1948), she explored race relations in the Dutch East Indies she later returned to that setting in the novels Heren van de thee (1992 The Tea Lords) and Sleuteloog (2002 Eye of the Key). ![]() The troubles would only be temporary, I was sure. ![]() ![]() Towards the end of this immaculately constructed Dutch novel from 1948, the never-named narrator informs us that, with the war over and his education as an engineer completed, he is determined to go back to the East Indies: The chaotic situation there in the aftermath of the Japanese occupation did not worry me unduly. ![]()
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