One hundred and sixty years ago a young Englishman founded a private raj on the coast of Borneo. The world he created eventually took in a territory the size of England, its expansion campaigns paid for in human heads. Here, polite Victorian conventions coexisted tenuously with one of the most violent cultures on earth, often with startling results: pockets of tenderness and extreme brutality appearing where least expected.

Into this world flowed a small tribe of adventurers, fugitives, criminals, and saints-- the madly talented and simply mad. And the women followed: wives and would-be wives, spinster nursemaids and heartless schemers, the rigidly virtuous and the virtually desperate. And always, the children, innocents too often the victims of an elemental nature both lush and deadly. Kalimantaan is the story of this world, these people. But the deeper story resides in the realm of the heart. It is about love in absurd conditions, the tenacity of it as well as our ability to miss it repeatedly and with perverse genius.

Heerlijk boek qua inhoud, achtergrond, verrijkende info en stijl...moeilijke start, veel losse eindjes, pas ten volle te genieten na een tweede lezing omwille van terug- en vooruitblikken die moeilijk kunnen geplaatst worden. Schat aan personages uit diverse culturen, volwaardig neergezet. ( )

A novel of the founding of a small kingdom on the north coast of Borneo. An Englishman sails in a small gunboat and takes over a small area, in the teeth of the Malay pirates and the sea Dyaks. This book was rich with fascinating detail, on the customs of the Dyaks and the fauna, and written in a very ornate style. There was rather too much brooding and introspection, women with tangled motives and emotions, and not as much narrative and adventure as I would have liked. Read slowly at the end of August, 1998. ( )

Amazingly well-written. Visually stunning. I initially found this novel difficult to get into, but I am happy to say that I persevered, and was well rewarded for my endeavors. This novel is at times so unflinchingly stark as to be harsh, but I love the play of "civility vs. primitiveness" that highlights the subtle nuances that shape and bind all of humanity. ( )