Boenga Roos dari Tjikembang (novel)
Cover, second printing (1930)
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| Author | Kwee Tek Hoay |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Tan Bellia |
| Country | Dutch East Indies |
| Language | Vernacular Malay |
| Genre | Romance novel |
| Published | 1927 (Panorama) 2013 (Lontar Foundation, in English) |
| Pages | 156 |
| OCLC | 66055761 |
Boenga Roos dari Tjikembang ([buˈŋa ˈrus daˈri tʃiˈkəmbaŋ]; translated to English as The Rose of Cikembang) is a 1927 vernacular Malay-language novel written by Kwee Tek Hoay. The seventeen-chapter book follows a plantation manager, Aij Tjeng, who must leave his beloved njai (concubine) Marsiti so that he can be married. Eighteen years later, after Aij Tjeng's daughter Lily dies, her fiancé Bian Koen discovers that Marsiti had a daughter with Aij Tjeng, Roosminah, who greatly resembles Lily. In the end Bian Koen and Roosminah are married.
Inspired by the lyrics to the song "If Those Lips Could Only Speak" and William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Boenga Roos dari Tjikembang was initially written as an outline for the stage drama troupe Union Dalia. Kwee intermixed several languages other than Malay, particularly Dutch, Sundanese, and English; he included two quotes from English poems and another from an English song. The novel has been interpreted variously as promotion of theosophy, a treatise on the Buddhist concept of reincarnation, a call for education, an ode to njais, and a condemnation of how such women are treated.
The novel was initially published as a serial in Kwee's magazine Panorama; it proved to be his most popular work. By 1930 there had been a number of stage adaptations, not all of which were authorised, leading Kwee to ask readers to help him enforce his copyright. The work was filmed in 1931 by The Teng Chun and then in 1975 by Fred Young and Rempo Urip. Though not considered part of the Indonesian literary canon, the book ranks amongst the most reprinted works of Chinese Malay literature. It has been translated into Dutch and English.
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