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

"[1]Helena Anthonia Maria Elisabeth Ingerman was born on 15 June 1888 on a sugar plantation[2] in Pati, Java, Dutch East Indies, and educated in the Netherlands.

She is viewed as one of the giants among Dutch-Indies literary writers, and The Ten Thousand Things in particular is widely regarded as an idiosyncratic masterpiece.

As Hans Koning puts it in his Introduction to the New York Review Books edition of the novel: "Dermoût was sui generis, a case all her own.

Hers was a near-compassionate disdain for the dividing lines, the hatreds and the fears ... She painted landscapes, still lifes and people in a world of myth and mystery."

Like the central character in The Ten Thousand Things, Dermoût lost her son in violent circumstances (he died in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp).

It possesses something that wards off hordes of readers, yet still manages to attract a handful, who then embrace it and spread the word of its exquisite nature.