Max Havelaar

Inside that parcel lives another story entirely — the story of Max Havelaar, an idealistic Assistant Resident newly posted to Lebak in Dutch Java. Brilliant and contradictory, at once sharp and tender-hearted, Havelaar takes an oath to protect the native population from extortion and tyranny, and then makes the mistake of meaning it. Beside him stand his devoted wife Tine, the honest and cautious Controller Verbrugge, a dignified elderly Regent whose abuses Havelaar is sworn to expose, and a widow who believes her husband died for asking the same questions.

The book moves between two registers and lets them argue with each other. Drystubble's self-satisfied moralizing exposes his own hypocrisy at every turn, while the Java chapters carry moral indignation. The inserted tale of the boy Saïdjah and his Adinda offers a quiet elegy. Multatuli trusts irony to do the work: a porter's honesty, a chief's downcast eyes, a line of documented evidence read aloud in a still room.

Written to be heard, this is a novel unafraid to speak plainly about a wrong it refuses to let lie. It asks only for readers "capable of the difficult faith, that hearts throb under that dark epidermis" — and then holds the door open.