Maria Dermoût

Maria Dermoût
Maria Dermoût in 1907
Born	Helena Anthonia Maria Elisabeth Ingerman (1888-06-15)15 June 1888 Pekalongan, Indonesia
Died	27 June 1962(1962-06-27) (aged 74) The Hague, Netherlands
Occupation	Novelist

Maria Dermoût (June 15, 1888 – June 27, 1962), was an Indo novelist, considered one of the greats of Dutch literature and as such an important proponent of Dutch Indies literature. In December 1958 Time magazine praised the translation of Maria Dermoût's The Ten Thousand Things, and named it one of the best books of the year among several other iconic literary masterpieces such as: 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' by Truman Capote, 'Doctor Zhivago' by Pasternak and 'Lolita' by Nabokov.

Whitney Balliett of The New Yorker wrote:

"Mrs. Dermout, in the manner of Thoreau and the early Hemingway, is an extraordinary sensualist. [...] in passages of a startling, unadorned, three-dimensional clarity; often one can almost touch what she describes."

Dermout is a Dutch novelist born on Java, Dutch East Indies, and educated in the Netherlands, who wrote in Dutch. After completing her education she returned to Java, where she married and travelled extensively across Java and the Moluccas with her husband. In 1933 her husband was pensioned, and the couple returned to the Netherlands. Maria Dermoût was widowed in 1952.

Dermoût died in The Hague in 1962. She is the subject of the biography Geheim Indië. Het leven van Maria Dermoût 1888-1962 ("The Secret East Indies. The Life of Maria Dermoût 1888-1962") in 2000 by the Indo (Dutch-Indonesian) author Kester Freriks.

Dermoût is arguably one of the great "what-ifs" of twentieth-century literature: she turned to writing early in life, but remained largely unpublished until she was 63. She wrote two novels, both of which were not published until she was in her sixties: The Ten Thousand Things (De tienduizend dingen 1955) and Days Before Yesterday — also published as Just Yesterday (Nog pas gisteren 1951). There are English translations of her novels by Hans Koning. Some of her short stories were published in translation in magazines such as Vogue during the 1960s. In Dutch, five short-story collections by her were also published.