DEFEAT AND VICTORY
A Second World War Trilogy
Author: Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana

DEFEAT and Victory by the Indonesian cultural-linguistic activist Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana is a curious sort of book. Cast as a romance or roman a clef, it is really a novelistically framed history of the period leading up to Indonesian independence.

This means it deals with the twilight and defeat of Dutch colonialism, the emergence of Indonesian nationalism and t