Novel
The Black Lake
Oeroeg
Hella S. Haasse · 1948
Synopsis
On the Kebon Djati plantation in Java, the narrator, son of the Dutch administrator, grows up with Oeroeg, son of the native foreman Deppoh: the only children on the estate, they are inseparable, and the young Dutch boy lives more at his friend's home than at his parents'. One evening, at the black lake of Telaga Hideung, Deppoh drowns while trying to save the narrator. Oeroeg then follows his friend to school in Soekaboemi, then in Batavia, where the two boys begin to drift apart.
Context
The story appeared anonymously on 26 February 1948 as the gift of the Boekenweek, following a competition among anonymous authors, and was printed in 145,000 copies. Its author drew in it on her longing for the Indies where she had grown up, at a moment when the future of the colony was being decided and when the literature of the Indies was becoming one of nostalgia. It has been translated into French by Marie-Noëlle Fontenat and into English by Ina Rilke in 2012.
Who it is for
A short narrative, of about eighty pages in its first edition, in the first person. It can be read in French and in English.
Prizes and reception
Part of the Dutch literary canon, school reading for several generations, reprinted and translated many times.