Max Havelaar

Praise

“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