Oeroeg

Oeroeg

Cover of a later printing
Author	Hella Haasse
Country	Netherlands
Language	Dutch
Genre	Novel
Publisher	Vereeniging ter Bevordering van de Belangen des Boekhandels
Publication date	1948
Media type	Print (hardback & paperback)
Pages	79 (1st edition)
OCLC	8882899

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 school children. The novel, a Bildungsroman, is set in the Dutch East Indies, and tells the story of an anonymous narrator growing up on a plantation in the Dutch colony West Java. His childhood friend is a boy of the same age, but of native descent. 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. After having served in the army during World War II, he returns to his native land, only to be told that this is not where he belongs, and that he must leave.

Oeroeg was published in 1948, at a time of great anxiety in the Netherlands over the future of their colony in the East; after the end of World War II it became clear quickly that Indonesia would be independent one way or another, and that the Netherlands would have to reconsider their status as a colonizing nation and, thus, the attendant claims of intellectual and cultural superiority. Author Rob Nieuwenhuys writes that post-revolution Indies literature was often called a "literature of longing and homesickness", with childhood memories a common theme.

The immediate impetus for the publication was the 1948 Boekenweek, the annual event held to promote Dutch literature; part of those festivities is the publication of a book given for free to the book-buying public. Hella Haasse, who had grown up in the Dutch East Indies and at this time was working in the cabaret and theater business in Amsterdam, submitted the manuscript for Oeroeg under the pseudonym Soeka toelis ("Like to write"); her name wasn't announced to the general public until after the novel was published, selected by an anonymous panel of 19 judges. With Oeroeg, her first publication in prose (she had already published a number of poems), her reputation was established at once.

The book starts in the preterite, "Oeroeg was my friend", and in reverse chronological order tells how the narrator came to that conclusion. The narrator grows up the child of a white Dutch family on Java, with Oeroeg, a native young man; as high-school students they live together in a boarding house. One crucial event is the death of Oeroeg's father, who died while saving the narrator from drowning. During World War II the narrator joins the Dutch army, and when he returns to Java finds that the world has changed: Indonesian nationalists have declared independence, and no longer accept the colonial overlord. In addition, the narrator's father is murdered, and he suspects his old friend, who has joined the Indonesian nationalist movement, of avenging his own father's death. At the end of the novel, the narrator has lost his friend, his identity, and his home country.