Haji Abdul Malik Karim Amrullah, better known as simply Hamka, was the Sumatran-born son of a devout Muslim who viewed local traditions as hindering the progress of religion[1] – his father's opinions influenced his.

[2] After a trip to Java and Mecca beginning when he was sixteen, he became a religious scholar in Deli, East Sumatra, then in Makassar, South Sulawesi.

[5] In 1935 he left Makassar for Medan, North Sumatra, where he became the editor of an Islamic weekly magazine, Pedoman Masjarakat.

Aziz, who is of purely Minang descent and a noble background, is favoured by her family; they look down on Zainuddin, who is poor and of mixed heritage.

Although Zainuddin receives a sizeable inheritance from Mak Base, he is too late to inform Hayati's family, and Aziz marries her.

[9] Van der Wijck was first published as a serial in his weekly Islamic-themed magazine Pedoman Masjarakat in Medan in 1938.

[6] The Indonesian socialist literary critic Bakri Siregar wrote that Van der Wijck was Hamka's best work, noting with interest the way in which Zainuddin writes about politics after losing Hayati.

[3] The Indonesian literary critic Maman S. Mahayana found Van der Wijck to have good characterisation and use suspense better than contemporary Balai Pustaka publications; he suggested that this was a benefit of the work originally being published as a serial.

wrote in the newspaper Bintang Timur that Van der Wijck was plagiarised from Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr's Sous les Tilleuls (Under the Limes; 1832), via the Arabic translation by Mustafa Lutfi al-Manfaluti; rumours of such plagiarism had been around before that.

[13][14] This became a widespread polemic in the Indonesian press, with most accusers originating from the leftist literary organisation Lekra,[a] while non-leftist writers defended the novel.

[16] The literary documentarian HB Jassin, who compared the two using an Indonesian translation of Sous les Tilleuls entitled Magdalena, wrote that there was very little chance that the novel should be called plagiarism, as Hamka's descriptions of locations were highly detailed and consistent with his earlier works.