The hunt for the heart : selected tales from the Dutch East Indies
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The hunt for the heart : selected tales from the Dutch East Indies
(Oxford in Asia paperbacks)
Oxford University Press, 1995
- : pbk
Available at 2 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Description and Table of Contents
Description
The stories in this anthology were published under the name of Vincent Mahieu, one of the two pseudonymns of Jan Boon, an Indo-European born in Holland in 1911. As Tjalie Robinson, journalist and activist, Jan Boon endeavoured to present the Indo-Dutch abroad, the Indos, from losing their distinctive culture, the heritage from their life in the Dutch East Indies. As Vincent Mahieu, intellectual, versatile, 'Western' Boon has left us with unique, engaging stories about the Indos with whom he grew up in the colonial society of the Indies. Calling himself 'a teller of tales' and drawing on his own experiences, Mahieu acquaints us with an extraordinary variety of characters - some humorous, other tragic, all fascinating. However, much as we are captivated by the colourful personalities and the riveting accounts of motorcycle racing, fighting, fishing, hunting, and all the daredeviltry that Mahieu loved and described so skilfully, we are made poignantly aware, especially in his longest story 'Tjoek', of his symbolism and the existentialist strain in his thought as he writes of the hunter and the hunted and the shadow death casts on life.
As Rob Nieuwenhuys, Dean of Dutch East Indies literature says: 'Whoever reads Tjalie Robinson or Vincent Mahieu will be deeply impressed and will observe how clearly and directly he writes, with a rarely found force and vivacity. He is unique.'
by "Nielsen BookData"