Dutch Indies literature

Its subject matter thematically revolves around the VOC and Dutch East Indies eras, but also includes the postcolonial discourse.

an influential Dutch literary subgenre developed described as follows: [...] a descriptive quality about them in the way they treated ordinary aspects of life in the Indies.

This sense of the different permeated all that was written, even if their own (authors) reference point was still a belief that they were part of the metropolitan literary tradition.

In December 1958 for instance American Time magazine praised the translation of Maria Dermoût's The Ten Thousand Things, and named it one of the best books of the year.

[10] In recent years the University of California, Berkeley has shown particular interest in the Dutch Indies subject matter.

Berkeley professor J. Dewulf is now a driving force behind further study and deepening of existing knowledge with initiatives such as the 'Amerindo Research Project'[11] and the 2011 'International Conference on Colonial and Post-Colonial Connections in Dutch Literature'.

An early example was the Javanese prince and poet Noto Soeroto, a writer and journalist from the Dutch East Indies.

He wrote a famous brochure on Kartini, the Javanese princess and Indonesian national heroine, whose popular letters were published in 1912 and also contributed to Dutch Indies literature.

The wider definition of Dutch Indies literature also includes Sukarno's historic defence speech at his 1930 trial in Bandung.