In his own country, Indonesia, it has been decreed this book should not be read. Yet, like its author, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, who has been imprisoned by both colonial and independent governments, This Earth of Mankind reaches beyond contemporary politics to touch more universal human concerns: the struggle against oppression and ignorance, and for selfhood and trust in a more just society.
A political novel in the widest sense, it is also a vividly evocative story of remarkable characters caught in the cultural whirlpool that was the Dutch East Indies of the 1890s.
Minke is a young Javanese student of great intelligence and ambition. Living equally among the colonists and colonized of 19th-century Java, he battles against the confines of colonial strictures. It is his love for Annelies that enables him to find the strength to embrace his world.