"A major novel (written in 1900) by a great modern European writer virtually unknown to American readers. Its setting is the island of Java, and its protagonist a Dutch colonial official undone by his willful application of reason and pragmatism to a culture secure in its nonrational, mystical intimacy with nature and the spirit world. This is a tragedy of colonialism essentially contemporary with, and fully comparable to, the work of Joseph Conrad."--Chicago Tribune Book World

"With the inexorable momentum and prophetic courage, Couperus probes the psychological and cultural causes of [protagonist] Van Oudijck's fall from presumed power and happiness against a fin-de-siècle background. Magic is but one theme in the novel, along with that of cultural estrangement and lovelessness in the sensuous but isolated world of the Indies."--World Literature Today

"A rare and unusual achievement. . . . Stark, haunting, and evocative, this eerie narrative time-travels back to another age, a darker dispensation."--Asiaweek

"An outstanding example of psychological fiction, it is a prophetic intimation of the beginning of the end of Dutch rule in Indonesia and an original understanding of an inevitable fate that transcends the . . . clash between the East and West."--Publishers Weekly