Multatuli

Multatuli is the most important Netherlandic novelist of the nineteenth century. His best-known work is Max Havelaar (1860), which was based on his experiences as a government official in the Dutch East Indies. In it, he lambasts the colonial regime for its alleged exploitation and maltreatment of the native population. The book's documentary value is open to question, but in literary and aesthetic terms it was far ahead of its time.