This Earth of Mankind

Colonial Surabaya at the turn of the twentieth century, the largest port of the Dutch East Indies and a city ruled by a strict ladder of race and law. A gifted Javanese student at the elite Dutch H.B.S. is pulled south to Wonokromo, into the household of a formidable concubine who runs a European farm, and finally into the colonial courts. The map runs from the old town on the Kalimas down through Wonokromo to the sugar country of East Java.

Minke

The H.B.S., Surabaya

Opening chapters

The narrator is one of a handful of native students admitted to the Hogere Burgerschool, the Dutch-language school built for European and elite children. His schooling sets him apart from other Javanese and is the hinge on which the whole story of colonial hierarchy turns.

Opening chapters

explicit The novel names the H.B.S., the elite Dutch secondary school. Its surviving building on Jalan Wijaya Kusuma dates to 1923; in the story's period the school stood nearer the old Kadipaten quarter, so this marks the enduring H.B.S. site in the north-east of the city.

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