I found this romantic, anti-colonial epic by accident... has anyone read it (the first book is called This Earth of Mankind)? It's the coming of age story of a young Javanese, but european educated student (called Minke; even the story of how he gets that name is interesting), and also the slow emergence of Indonesia from Dutch rule. The first book reminds me a little of Mishima's Spring Snow in the almost blurring intensity of an unravelling - in both novels - of a desperate adolescent love, and also the intense pressure of modern technology (the locomotive, photography, the automobile) and industrialization on pre-modern asia. By the third volume - where I am right now - without giving too much away about his loves and loves lost, Minke has founded one of the first political parties in Indonesia, an Islamic Traders Union. Anyway, looking for fellow readers/travellers...