First published in 1927, Kwee Tek Hoay’s The Rose of Cikembang is an excellent example of the peranakan literature of the Netherlands East Indies that flourished between the 1900s and 1942 when the Japanese occupation in Indonesia began. Highly sentimental, the novel is rich in many of the controversial themes that Kwee was famous for: interracial love and the lives of its offspring, fate and karma, mysticism and reincarnation. In pre-war Indonesia, Kwee Tek Hoay’s novels were loved by urban readers. The Rose of Tjikembang, his most popular novel, was filmed twice, first in the early 1930s and again in the 1970s.
Kwee Tek Hoay (Author)
Kwee Tek Hoay, one of the most prolific and best loved peranakan writers of the pre-WWII period, was born in West Java. His most known writing today is The Origins of the Modern Chinese Movement in Indonesia. Early in his adult life, he became a journalist for a number of Chinese-owned Malay-language newspapers and published a number of journals with articles ranging from politics to religion and history, as well as his own literary works. Novels were only a part of Kwee Tek Hoay’s phenomenal literary works; he also wrote plays, poetry, and essays on many different subjects.
