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Pranjal Parashar pranjal1387e71 — Wonderful book - highly recommend if only to read a good story but also for Pram's description of 19th century Jakarta. I felt like I travelled through another world and another person's life. Pram is an excellent storyteller, very evocative and visual. It is possible to believe he first recounted these stories orally as the story, even when translated, reads very smoothly and fast. As a novel, I loved this story and his poetical prose. These are some thoughts I shared with a friend when I first finished the book... I have two main comments to make about the story itself. Firstly, re: Indonesian society that Pram is fictionalizing. I know next to nothing about Indonesian society today or in the past. The foremost theme in this book was the question of blood; native, pure Dutch, European, Indo (half cast). In several cases, in particular when Minke meets Mama (Annelise's mother), it becomes clear that people were treated according to their position within society with native being the bottom of the rung and Dutch being the top and different gradations in between, namely gender distinctions. I actually don't know much about how much Dutch society was stratified in Holland. The English, too, obviously had a hierarchical system of nobility, respectable middle class and peasants, yet in England's colonies that class distinction becomes less pronounced, not more, I guess mostly because primarily those that immigrated to the new lands were of the lower classes and eventually they were the ones who came to hold positions of power in the colony. The description in Pram's book of a rigidly structured class system is extremely foreign to me and hence I noted it with interest. I have a few questions; firstly, was Indonesian society traditionally (pre-European) a class / cast based system? Was the Dutch system, in short, exploiting an already established hierarchy in Indonesia or did they establish a whole new world in which people were treated differently according to their class and blood? I ask this because, obviously it would be very difficult to police this kind of system without the support of the native Javanese for instance, and in Pram's book, natives seemed to treat their own people as inhumanely as the Dutch. My other comment is more subjective. The characters of Minke, Annelise and Nyai (Mama) and even that of Robert (Mama's son) and Mr Mellema leave me with more questions than answers. I thoroughly disliked Pram's portrayal of Annelise as some beautiful doll, sedated and totally useless to any experience of life's ups and downs. Minke's relationship of carrying her around and protecting her from any disturbance was exceedingly tiresome and seemed to be underlying the prejudice that women should be adornments of their husbands rather than true partners in life. Nyai seemed almost obsessed in revenge and retribution. I liked her very much but couldn't help but think that she had cut off any love that could have come her way. Certainly her description of her early life with Mr Mellema seemed that he at least had grand ideas for her rather than simply to enslave her. Which moves me onto Mr Mellema himself. Pram seemed to be suggesting that he had become syphilitic through his association with whores at Ay Tainge's place but syphilis does not show quite that quickly. Sure, this is fiction, but even if he was genetically disposed towards madness, hadn't his early actions towards Nyai, which seemed motivated by if not love, then affection, deserve of more human emotions to him later when he was indisposed? And who the hell was Fatso in the end – huh! Lol. The only woman who seemed to make much sense was Minke's own mother. I think she will loom larger in his life as he gets older. I have still to read the second book (and third and fourth) so I hope that many of these questions will be answered as I proceed.