Book Description

Mochtar Lubis, in this vivid dissection of social and political life in Jakarta at the beginning of the 1960s, reveals the dark currents of poverty, corruption and vice which course beneath the surface of one of the great cities of the Third World. Although set in Indonesia, the tale that unfolds has universal application as it describes the forces which determine the lives of rich and poor, politicians and criminals, intellectuals and simple rural immigrants alike, as they struggle for survival. Through the character of the central figure, Suryono, a young, Western-educated government official, the author depicts the complex web of threads which enmesh both individual and society in a newly developing nation, with compassion as well as insight.