The Hidden Force

“The story is about the wife of a Dutch colonial civil servant who has an adulterous affair, and she’s punished in a sort of supernatural way by visitations. Sexually it’s an extraordinarily explicit book, certainly for its time. There is a whole depth to the culture of the Dutch East Indies which the Europeans barely understood if at all, and that was undermining their sense of omnipotence everyday. This is associated with certain supernatural occurences, which Couperus uses as a metaphor for a whole world that the West simply didn’t see or know existed. That’s the hidden force. It’s about the illusion of Western omnipotence.” Read more...

The best books on East and West

Ian Buruma, Journalist