MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - MobileRead June 2013 Book Club Nominations

desertblues · 05-21-2013, 03:17 PM

I nominate The tea lords by Hella Haasse.

Hella Haasse was the 'grand old lady' of Dutch literature. She got many awards in the Netherlands as well in France (Académie Francaise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hella_Haasse

Her internationally acclaimed Magnus opus "Heren van de Thee" was translated to ‘The Tea Lords’ in 2010. It is a historical novel set in the Dutch East Indies of the 19th and 20th century, based on a trove of documents and letters deposited in the Netherlands by the heirs and relations of the book’s characters.

The Tea Lords, published in the Netherlands in 1992 and well rendered into English by Ina Rilke, is Haasse's first appearance here for 15 years. It is one of her largest-scale exercises in fictional sympathy: a portrayal of three generations of Dutch colonial experience in the East Indies, and altogether more forgiving than Multatuli's classic 1860 novel, Max Havelaar, which sweepingly denounced his country's abuses. (Multatuli appears in Haasse's narrative as a distant cousin-by-marriage and is given fair, if mocking, treatment for his vanity and egotism, especially where women were concerned.)
Haasse's intention in The Tea Lords is not to slay the monster of colonialism again, but to seek out a representative family's story – a product of its time rather than its greediest architect or blackest sheep.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010...-haasse-review

Available:
Amazon US: p-book is only listed as pre-order
UK http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tea-Lords-He.../dp/1846271711 (ebook)
Australia http://www.booktopia.com.au/search.e...uctType=917504 (p-book)
Canada http://www.amazon.ca/s/ref=nb_sb_nos...s=hella+haasse (p-book and ebook)

05-21-2013, 03:17 PM	#22
desertblues Home for the moment Posts: 5,127 Karma: 27718936 Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: travelling Device: various	I nominate The tea lords by Hella Haasse. Hella Haasse was the 'grand old lady' of Dutch literature. She got many awards in the Netherlands as well in France (Académie Francaise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hella_Haasse Her internationally acclaimed Magnus opus "Heren van de Thee" was translated to ‘The Tea Lords’ in 2010. It is a historical novel set in the Dutch East Indies of the 19th and 20th century, based on a trove of documents and letters deposited in the Netherlands by the heirs and relations of the book’s characters. The Tea Lords, published in the Netherlands in 1992 and well rendered into English by Ina Rilke, is Haasse's first appearance here for 15 years. It is one of her largest-scale exercises in fictional sympathy: a portrayal of three generations of Dutch colonial experience in the East Indies, and altogether more forgiving than Multatuli's classic 1860 novel, Max Havelaar, which sweepingly denounced his country's abuses. (Multatuli appears in Haasse's narrative as a distant cousin-by-marriage and is given fair, if mocking, treatment for his vanity and egotism, especially where women were concerned.) Haasse's intention in The Tea Lords is not to slay the monster of colonialism again, but to seek out a representative family's story – a product of its time rather than its greediest architect or blackest sheep. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010...-haasse-review Available: Amazon US: p-book is only listed as pre-order UK http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tea-Lords-He.../dp/1846271711 (ebook) Australia http://www.booktopia.com.au/search.e...uctType=917504 (p-book) Canada http://www.amazon.ca/s/ref=nb_sb_nos...s=hella+haasse (p-book and ebook) Last edited by desertblues; 05-06-2015 at 11:22 AM.