Books like 'Max Havelaar, or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company'
Readers who enjoyed Max Havelaar, or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company by Multatuli & Eduard Douwes Dekker also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
historical action / adventure classics historical-fiction colonization university politics literary-fiction high-school journey
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Time of White Horses by Ibrahim Nasrallah
Rated: 4.42 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsSpanning the collapse of Ottoman rule and the British Mandate in Palestine, this is the story of three generations of a defiant family from the Palestinian village of Hadiya before 1948. Through the lives of Mahmud, chief elder of Hadiya, his son Khaled, and Khaled’s grandson Naji, we enter the life of a tribe whose fate is decided by one colonizer after another...Categorized as:
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Time of Parting by Anton Donchev
Rated: 4.57 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIn the 17th century, a Bulgarian Christian region is selected by the Ottoman rulers to serve as an example of conversion to Islam. A Janissary who was taken from the village as a boy is sent to force the reluctant inhabitants to convert. The local Turkish governor seeks a peaceful solution, but ultimately torture, violence, and rebellion break out... -
Memed, My Hawk by Yaşar Kemal
Rated: 4.45 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsA tale of high adventure and lyrical celebration, tenderness and violence, generosity and ruthlessness, Memed, My Hawk is the defining achievement of one of the greatest and most beloved of living writers, Yashar Kemal. It is reissued here with a new introduction by the author on the fiftieth anniversary of its first publication... -
They Burn Thistles by Yaşar Kemal
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThis is the story of a bitter war between the poor Turkish peasants of the Taurus Mountains and the Aghas who covet their land. Ali Safa is determined to take possession of the village of Vayvay but its inhabitants will not sell. Then one villager weakens, prepared to part with his land in return for the Agha's best stallion...Categorized as:
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Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov by Anton Chekhov
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsRichard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the highly acclaimed translators of and which was an Oprah Book Club pick and million-copy bestseller, bring their unmatched talents to a collection of thirty of Chekhov’s best tales from the major periods of his creative life...Categorized as:
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This Earth of Mankind by Pramoedya Ananta Toer
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsMinke 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...Categorized as:
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Dom Casmurro by Machado de Assis, Elizabeth Hardwick
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsYou can find an alternative cover edition for this ISBN here. Bento Santiago, the wildly unreliable narrator of Dom Casmurro, believes that he has been cuckolded—he suspects that his wife has cheated on him with his best friend and that her child is not his...Categorized as:
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The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andrić
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsA vivid depiction of the suffering history has imposed upon the people of Bosnia from the late sixteenth century to the beginning of World War I, The Bridge on the Drina earned Ivo Andric the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1961. A great stone bridge built three centuries ago in the heart of the Balkans by a Grand Vezir of the Ottoman Empire dominates the setting of Andric's stunning novel... -
Conversation in the Cathedral by Mario Vargas Llosa
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA haunting tale of power, corruption, and the complex search for identity, Conversation in The Cathedral takes place in 1950s Peru during the dictatorship of Manuel Apolinario Odría Amoretti...Categorized as:
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Child of All Nations by Pramoedya Ananta Toer
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn Child of All Nations, the reader is immediately swept up by a story that is profoundly feminist, devastatingly anticolonialist—and full of heartbreak, suspense, love, and fury. Pramoedya immerses the reader in a world that is astonishing in its vividness: the cultural whirlpool that was the Dutch East Indies of the 1890s... -
Data Tutashkhia by Chabua Amirejibi
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThe novel tells the story of a Georgian outlaw at the time of the tsars (1854 onwards). It combines thriller elements with Dostoyevskian themes of personal fate and national identity. Above all, though, it defends the right to personal freedom and critical expression in the face of a repressive political system...Categorized as:
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The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years by Chingiz Aitmatov
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsSet in the vast windswept Central Asian steppes and the infinite reaches of galactic space, this powerful novel offers a vivid view of the culture and values of the Soviet Union's Central Asian peoples...Categorized as:
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Palestine's Children: Returning to Haifa & Other Stories by Ghassan Kanafani
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsPolitics and the novel, Ghassan Kanafani once said, are an indivisible case. Fadl al-Naqib has reflected that Kanafani wrote the Palestinian story, then he was written by it. His narratives offer entry into the Palestinian experience of the conflict that has anguished the people of the Middle East for more than a century...Categorized as:
historical-fiction politics classics university colonization fiction historical 20th-century -
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThis stirring, poignant novel, based on real historical events that made of actual people true heroes, unfolds the tragedy that befell the Armenian people in the dark year of 1915. The Great War is raging through Europe, and in the ancient, mountainous lands southwest of the Caspian Sea the Turks have begun systematically to exterminate their Christian subjects...Categorized as:
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The Day of the Scorpion by Paul Scott, Richard Brown
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe second novel in The Raj Quartet: the arrest by British police of Mohammed Ali Kasim, who is known to sympathise with the Quit India movement, signifies a further deterioration in Anglo-India relations. For families such as the Laytons, who have lived and served in India for generations, the immediate social and political realities are both disturbing and tragic... -
Noli Me Tángere by José Rizal, Harold Augenbraum
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn more than a century since its appearance, José Rizal's Noli Me Tangere has become widely known as the great novel of the Philippines... -
The Reign Of Greed by José Rizal
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratings"El Filibusterismo" ("The Subversive") is the second novel by Jose Rizal (1861-1896), national hero of the Philippines. Like its predecessor, the better-known "Noli Me Tangere", the "Fili" was written in Castilian while Rizal was traveling and studying in Europe. It was published in Ghent in 1891 and later translated into English, German, French, Japanese, Tagalog, Ilonggo, and other languages... -
The Kites by Romain Gary
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsOn a small farm in Normandy, as Hitler rises to power in Germany, young Ludo comes of age in the care of his Uncle Ambrose, an eccentric mailman, kite-maker, and pacifist. Ludo’s quiet existence changes the day he meets Lila, a girl from the aristocratic Polish family who own the estate next door. In a single glance, Ludo instantly falls in love forever; Lila, on the other hand, remains elusive... -
Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories by Ghassan Kanafani
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThis collection of important stories by novelist, journalist, teacher, and Palestinian activist Ghassan Kanafani includes the stunning novella Men in the Sun (1962), the basis of the The Deceived. Also in the volume are "The Land of Sad Oranges" (1958), "'If You Were a Horse.. -
They Were Counted by Miklós Bánffy, Patrick Leigh Fermor
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsPainting an unrivalled portrait of the vanished world of pre-1914 Hungary, this story is told through the eyes of two young Transylvanian cousins, Count Balint Abady and Count Laszlo Gyeroffy...Categorized as:
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The Tale of Kiều by Nguyễn Du, Alexander Barton Woodside
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsSince its publication in the early nineteenth century, this long narrative poem has stood unchallenged as the supreme masterpiece of Vietnamese literature...Categorized as:
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Bosnian Chronicle by Ivo Andrić, Joseph Hitrec
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSet in the town of Travnik, Bosnian Chronicle presents the struggle for supremacy in a region that stubbornly refuses to submit to any outsider. The era is Napoleanic and the novel, both in its historical scope and psychological subtley, Tolstoyan. In its portray of conflict and fierce ethnic loyalties, the story is also eerily relevant...Categorized as:
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Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsEugene Onegin is the master work of the poet whom Russians regard as the fountainhead of their literature. Set in 1820s Russia, Pushkin's verse novel follows the fates of three men and three women...Categorized as:
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And the Land Lay Still by James Robertson
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsAnd the Land Lay Still is the sweeping Scottish epic by James RobertsonAnd the Land Lay Still is nothing less than the story of a nation. James Robertson's breathtaking novel is a portrait of modern Scotland as seen through the eyes of natives and immigrants, journalists and politicians, drop-outs and spooks, all trying to make their way through a country in the throes of great and rapid change...Categorized as:
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Murambi, The Book of Bones by Boubacar Boris Diop
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsIn April of 1994, nearly a million Rwandans were killed in what would prove to be one of the swiftest, most terrifying killing sprees of the 20th century. In Murambi, The Book of Bones, Boubacar Boris Diop comes face to face with the chilling horror and overwhelming sadness of the tragedy...Categorized as:
historical-fiction university journey literary-fiction fiction 21st-century historical sad -
The Death Ship by B. Traven
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThe Death Ship tells the story of an American sailor, stateless and penniless because he has lost his passport, who is harassed by police and hounded across Europe until he finds an 'illegal' job shoveling coal in the hold of a steamer bound for destruction.The Death Ship is the first of B...Categorized as:
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Sarajevo Marlboro by Miljenko Jergović
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsMiljenko Jergovic’s remarkable début collection of stories, Sarajevo Marlboro – winner of the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize – earned him wide acclaim throughout Europe. Croatian by birth, Jergovic ? spent his childhood in Sarajevo and chose to remain there throughout most of the war... -
The Colony by Audrey Magee
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn 1979, as violence erupts all over Ireland, two outsiders travel to a small island off the west coast in search of their own answers, despite what it may cost the islanders. It is the summer of 1979. An English painter travels to a small island off the west coast of Ireland. Mr. Lloyd takes the last leg by currach, though boats with engines are available and he doesn't much like the sea...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction politics colonization europe british-isles ireland fiction -
Under the Yoke by Ivan Vazov, Edward Gosse
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 19 ratingsU Plot The tranquility in a Bulgarian village under Ottoman rule is only superficial: the people are quietly preparing for an uprising. The plot follows the story of Boycho Ognyanov, who, having escaped from a prison in Diarbekir, returns to the Bulgarian town of Byala Cherkva (White Church, today Sopot) to take part in the rebellion. There he meets old friends, enemies, and the love of his life...Categorized as:
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Red Strangers by Elspeth Huxley
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsNew editions of Elspeth Huxley's stirring account of her childhood in Kenya and her novel of the destructive forces of colonization.Epic in its scale, Red Strangers spans four generations of a Kikuyu family in Africa and their relationship with European settlers, nicknamed "red" strangers because of their sunburns...Categorized as:
historical-fiction classics colonization literary-fiction africa eastern-africa kenya fiction -
A Book of Memories by Péter Nádas, Imre Goldstein
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThis extraordinary magnum opus seems at first to be a confessional autobiographical novel in the grand manner, claiming and extending the legacy of Proust and Mann. But it is more: Peter Nadas has given us a superb contemporary psychological novel that comes to terms with the ghosts, corpses, and repressed nightmares of Europe's recent past...Categorized as:
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The Bridge of Beyond by Simone Schwarz-Bart
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThis is an intoxicating tale of love and wonder, mothers and daughters, spiritual values and the grim legacy of slavery on the French Antillean island of Guadeloupe. Here long-suffering Telumee tells her life story and tells us about the proud line of Lougandor women she continues to draw strength from... -
The Shiralee by D'Arcy Niland
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA shiralee is a swag, a burden, a bloody millstone - and that's what four-year-old Buster is to her father, Macauley. He takes the child on the road with him to spite his wife, but months pass and still no word comes to ask for the little girl back...Categorized as:
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The Dark Side of Love by Rafik Schami
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsAn international bestseller available in English for the first time,a story of forbidden love set against the background of Arabic culture and endless feuds between clansA dead man hangs from the portal of St Paul s Chapel in Damascus. He was a Muslim officer and he was murdered...Categorized as:
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Rain and Other South Sea Stories by W. Somerset Maugham
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsW. Somerset Maugham led many lives, including that of a doctor in London's slums, a successful playwright and novelist, an agent for British Intelligence during World War I, and a world traveler. In 1917, he took the first of many voyages to the Pacific Islands and the Far East, where his keen sense of observation found inspiration for some of his finest writing... -
The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsThe Radetzky March charts the history of the Trotta family through three generations spanning the rise and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Through the Battle of Solferino, to the entombment of the last Hapsburg emperor, Roth's intelligent compassionate narrative illuminates the crumbling of a way of life... -
The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThe Leopard is a story of a decadent and dying aristocracy threatened by the forces of revolution and democracy. Set against the political upheavals of Italy in the 1860s, it focuses on Don Fabrizio, a Sicilian prince of immense sensual appetites, wealth, and great personal magnetism... -
Cities of Salt by Abdul Rahman Munif, عبد الرحمن منيف
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsSet in an unnamed Persian Gulf kingdom in the 1930s, this remarkable novel tells the story of the disruption and diaspora of a poor oasis community following the discovery of oil there. The meeting of the Arabs and the Americans who, in essence, colonize the remote region is a cultural confrontation in which religion, history, superstition, and mutual incomprehension all play a part... -
The President by Miguel Ángel Asturias
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsGuatemalan diplomat and writer Miguel Angel Asturias (1899–1974) began this award-winning work while still a law student. It is a story of a ruthless dictator and his schemes to dispose of a political adversary in an unnamed Latin American country usually identified as Guatemala. The book has been acclaimed for portraying both a totalitarian government and its damaging psychological effects... -
Broken April by Ismail Kadare
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsFrom the moment that Gjorg's brother is killed by a neighbour, his own life is forfeit: for the code of Kanun requires Gjorg to kill his brother's murderer and then in turn be hunted down. After shooting his brother's killer, young Gjorg is entitled to thirty days' grace - not enough to see out the month of April.Then a visiting honeymoon couple cross the path of the fugitive...Categorized as:
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The Sorrow Of War: A Novel of North Vietnam by Bảo Ninh
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsBao Ninh, a former North Vietnamese soldier, provides a strikingly honest look at how the Vietnam War forever changed his life, his country, and the people who live there...Categorized as:
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The General of the Dead Army by Ismail Kadare
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThis is the story of an Italian general, accompanied by his chaplain, charged with the mission of scouring Albania in search of the bones of their fallen countrymen, killed twenty years earlier during World War II...Categorized as:
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A Dry White Season by André P. Brink
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAs startling and powerful as when first published more than two decades ago, André Brink's classic novel, A Dry White Season, is an unflinching and unforgettable look at racial intolerance, the human condition, and the heavy price of morality.Ben Du Toit is a white schoolteacher in suburban Johannesburg in a dark time of intolerance and state-sanctioned apartheid...Categorized as:
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Raised from the Ground by José Saramago
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA multigenerational family saga that paints a sweeping portrait of twentieth-century PortugalFirst published in 1980, the City of Lisbon Prize–winning Raised from the Ground follows the changing fortunes of the Mau Tempo family—poor landless peasants not unlike Saramago’s own grandparents...Categorized as:
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White Dog Fell from the Sky by Eleanor Morse
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAn extraordinary novel of love, friendship, and betrayal for admirers of Abraham Verghese and Edwidge Danticat Eleanor Morse’s rich and intimate portrait of Botswana, and of three people whose intertwined lives are at once tragic and remarkable, is an absorbing and deeply moving story...Categorized as:
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The Big Green Tent by Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Ludmila Ulitskaya
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAn absorbing novel of dissident life in the Soviet Union, by one of Russia's most popular writers The Big Green Tent is the kind of book the term "Russian novel" was invented for. A sweeping saga, it tells the story of three school friends who meet in Moscow in the 1950s and go on to embody the heroism, folly, compromise, and hope of the Soviet dissident experience...Categorized as:
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Немили-недраги by Ivan Vazov, Иван Вазов
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratings...Categorized as:
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Again to Carthage by John L. Parker Jr.
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsJohn L. Parker, Jr.’s first novel, Once a Runner, is the cult novel for runners. Self-published in the late 1970s, and for years sold out of the trunk of the author’s car at running events, it went on to sell over 100,000 copies and achieve legendary status among runners.It perfectly captured the intensity, relentlessness, and sheer lunacy of a serious miler’s life...Categorized as:
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Zama by Antonio di Benedetto
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsFirst published in 1956, Zama is now universally recognized as one of the masterpieces of modern Argentinean and Spanish-language literature... -
The Spider's House by Paul Bowles, Francine Prose
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSet in Fez, Morocco, during that country's 1954 nationalist uprising, The Spider's House is perhaps Paul Bowles's most beautifully subtle novel, richly descriptive of its setting, and uncompromising in its characterizations...
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