Kalimantaan

One hundred and sixty years ago a young Englishman founded a private raj on the coast of Borneo. The world he created eventually took in a territory the size of England, its expansion campaigns paid for in human heads. Here, polite Victorian conventions coexisted tenuously with one of the most violent cultures on earth, often with startling results: pockets of tenderness and extreme brutality appearing where least expected.

Into this world flowed a small tribe of adventurers, fugitives, criminals, and saints-- the madly talented and simply mad. And the women followed: wives and would-be wives, spinster nursemaids and heartless schemers, the rigidly virtuous and the virtually desperate. And always, the children, innocents too often the show more victims of an elemental nature both lush and deadly. Kalimantaan is the story of this world, these people. But the deeper story resides in the realm of the heart. It is about love in absurd conditions, the tenacity of it as well as our ability to miss it repeatedly and with perverse genius. show less

This is quite a work. Beautiful and dark and moving back and forwards in time and place, it reminds me most of all of 100 Years Of Solitude. This is a period of history I know nothing about, and as usual it all seems to be worse than I could have guessed. A great book.

Amazingly well-written. Visually stunning. I initially found this novel difficult to get into, but I am happy to say that I persevered, and was well rewarded for my endeavors. This novel is at times so unflinchingly stark as to be harsh, but I love the play of "civility vs. primitiveness" that highlights the subtle nuances that shape and bind all of humanity.

A novel of the founding of a small kingdom on the north coast of Borneo. An Englishman sails in a small gunboat and takes over a small area, in the teeth of the Malay pirates and the sea Dyaks. This book was rich with fascinating detail, on the customs of the Dyaks and the fauna, and written in a very ornate style. There was rather too much brooding and introspection, women with tangled motives and emotions, and not as much narrative and adventure as I would have liked. Read slowly at the end of August, 1998.

The best thing about this book was the cover design. I must have gotten a first edition on remainder because there was no landscape illustration, only the golden diamond in the center and an all-over print of a supremely creepy batik pattern. The pages between the covers did not make an impression at all. I remember the plot and characters only barely. What struck me was how unexciting such a potentially arresting situation could be.

Heerlijk boek qua inhoud, achtergrond, verrijkende info en stijl...moeilijke start, veel losse eindjes, pas ten volle te genieten na een tweede lezing omwille van terug- en vooruitblikken die moeilijk kunnen geplaatst worden. Schat aan personages uit diverse culturen, volwaardig neergezet.