Dutch bildungsromans

Oeroeg (translated into English as "The Black Lake") is the first novel by Hella Haasse. First published anonymously in 1948, it has become one of the best-known Dutch novels and a staple of literary education for many Dutch schoolchildren. The novel, a Bildungsroman, is set in the former Dutch East Indies: the anonymous narrator grows up on a plantation in the Dutch colony of West Java, his childhood friend is a native boy of the same age. As the narrator grows up, he finds himself becoming estranged from his friend, as a result of the political and racial circumstances of colonial life. Afte