The Black Lake, by Hella S. Haasse

This is a very beautiful book, about childhood and coming of age, but mostly about colonialism amd how it affects human relationships. How poisonous it was, how it shaped people's minds and created so much unnecessary suffering.

And the writing is beautiful, I leave here just a small sample:

We continued splashing about for some time, out of habit, and likely out of a sense of awkwardness too, but without anything like our old jollity. The difference was now we saw it all – the bathing, the rocks in the river, the sparkling current – with different eyes, eyes that had lost the ability to see the real world as a world of wonder. Gone was the magical kingdom in which we were the heroes and explorers. The mysterious grottos were nothing but deep shadows beneath overhanging foliage, our old hunting ground of rocky plateaus and unbridgeable rapids only a mountain stream coursing over its bed of gravel and jutting stones. Crabs and dragonflies, a-shimmer with alluring colours, shot away under and over the surface, but they no longer took our breath away, for all that we made to chase them in the old spirit of rivalry. As we lay on our backs to dry on a slab of rock, the true significance of these changes flashed through my mind. I glanced at Oeroeg, and saw the same discovery in his eyes. A sense of finality. We were children no longer.

I am glad I picked this book, along with a few others, at the Paagman Bookstore at The Hague. It's always nice to find good fiction, it's one of the pleasures I get from travelling.