The Hidden Force is a 1900 novel by the Dutch writer, L. Couperus. In the novel, the protagonist, Van Oudijck, a Dutch resident, faces his own demise as a result of his inability to see past his Western rationalism. The East Indian people and countryside have no effect on him, and the ambiance of Java, coupled with the adverse behavior of their Javanese subjects, prove more powerful than the might and power of the colonials.
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
L. Couperus (1863-1923) is recognized as one of the major innovators of Dutch fiction. E. M. Beekman is Multatuli Professor of Dutch Literature, Language, and Culture at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and editor of the twelve-volume Library of the Indies.
