Author Description

First published in Dutch in 1990, The Hidden Force is a masterpiece of psychological fiction by one of Holland's greatest novelists. Set on the island of Java at the turn of the century, it describes the tragedy of Van Oudijck, a high official in the colonial administration. Rigidly pragmatic, Van Oudijck is blind to the possibility of fate and the silent powers of angler (magical possession.) By the end of the novel he has withdrawn to a small village in the hinterlands, the tragic victim of a way of life he cannot fully understand. The book is important both for its literary achievement and for what it tells us about the relation of colonizer to colonized in the Dutch East Indies. Although written forty-five years before Indonesian independence, it reveals many of the reasons why the Dutch colonial empire was destined to fail. The decline of one individual comes to symbolize the futility of the entire colonial enterprise.