Max Havelaar: Or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company

Description

A fierce indictment of colonialism, Max Havelaar is a masterpiece of Dutch literature based on the author's own experience as an adminstrator in the Dutch East Indies in the 1850s. The Dutch East Indies, January 1856. The new Assistant Resident, Max Havelaar, arrives in the remote regency of Lebak, preceded by his reputation as a quixotic idealist. Some think him a fool, others a genius, but "one thing is certain- he was an unusual man, and worthy of observation." As Havelaar crusades against corruption, he makes a few unsettling observations of his own. Why don't the financial statements add up? Was the previous Assistant Resident's death really an accident? And why are his superiors obstructing his efforts to learn the truth? A few years later in Amsterdam, the stolid Dutch coffee broker Batavus Drystubble obtains Havelaar's papers from the threadbare Scarfman, who wanders the streets in search of work. Drystubble pores over the documents in the hopes of lucrative revelations about the coffee trade. But his spirited young son Frits and romantic-souled German assistant Ernest Stern discover something much more astonishing- a scandal that strikes at the heart of the whole Dutch colonial enterprise... Based on the author's true experiences as an administrator in Java, Max Havelaar is a fiery indictment of colonial misrule and one of the masterpieces of Dutch literature. This is the first new English translation of Multatuli's furious and funny masterpiece in more than fifty years.

Multatuli (1820-1887), born Eduard Douwes Dekker in Amsterdam, was one of the Netherlands' greatest writers. He traveled to the Dutch East Indies in 1838, and had a number of government jobs until resigning from his position as assistant commissioner of Lebak, Java, in 1856, when his efforts to protect the Javanese people from their own chiefs were not supported by the colonial government. Upon returning to Europe, he became renowned for his novel Max Havelaar, first published in 1860, which was based on his time in the Dutch East Indies. Ina Rilke is a translator of Dutch and French and has received the Vondel Prize, the Scott Moncrieff Prize, and the Flemish Culture Prize for her translations. She lives in Amsterdam and Paris. David McKay is a translator of Dutch literature and was longlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize for his translation of Stefan Hertman's War and Turpentine.

"The new translation is as fresh as if Multatuli had just written it himself. There are great innovations here: the addition of a new introduction by Indonesia's greatest author, the much-persecuted Pramoedya Ananta Toer - the cover image of an exploding volcano on Java, by the famous Javanese painter, Raden Saleh, a contemporary of Multatuli - also, the use of recent Multatuli scholarship in particular the critical edition by Kets-Vree in 1992 - the inclusion of Multatuli's own disillusioned notes which he added later in life - a Glossary of Indonesian terms, and a very helpful timeline. All these greatly enrich the book and enable readers of today to better understand this great novel, which - as Pramoedya said - 'was the book that killed colonialism'." -Reinier Salverda "Kurt Vonnegut's best metafiction has nothing on Multatuli...This attractive and accessible new translation of Max Havelaar is highly recommended to lovers of satire." -Taylor Roberts "D.H. Lawrence shrewdly understood Douwes Dekker as above all a satirist and ironist. He wrote...'The great dynamic force in Multatuli is as it was, really, in Jean Paul and in Swift and Gogol, and in Mark Twain, hate, a passionate, honourable hate.'...Max Havelaar amply confirms this estimation and shows the reader how hatred creates a narrative bridge across two continents...A call, not for an antifeudal insurrection of natives against their abusive chiefs, but rather for the overthrow of colonialism itself." -Benedict Anderson