Faded Portraits (Library of the Indies) - Hardcover

De Nijs, E. Breton

3.53

32 ratings by Goodreads

9780870233630: Faded Portraits (Library of the Indies)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0870233637 ISBN 13: 9780870233630

Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press, 1982

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

A fictionalized memoir of family life in former colonial Dutch East Indies, Faded Portraits is the story of the once powerful DePaulys, and especially of Aunt Sophie, the matriarch, whose efforts to preserve the family heritage- the "purity" of the Dutch bloodline and culture- prove inevitably tragic. The forms to which aunt Sophie clings, and which she seeks to impose on her family, represent an arrogant blindness to the personal needs of others and to the cruelties of the colonial system, and underscore the struggles of displaced people who must accept the eclipse of their way of life. The book is reminiscent of the literature of the American South- of the novels of William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, John Crowne Ransom, Robert Penn Warren. That too was "colonial" literature, wistfully determined to record an era that was passing.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:

Born in Java in 1908, the son of a Dutch father and a mother of Javanese-Dutch descent, E. Breton de Nijs--the pseudonym of Rob Nieuwenhuys--is author of one other library of the Indies volume, Mirror of the Indies: A History of Dutch Colonial Literature.

Language Notes:

Text: English, Dutch (translation)

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.