Minke is a young Javanese student of great intelligence, sensitivity, and ambition. Living equally among the colonists and colonized of late nineteenth-century Java, he battles against the confines of colonial strictures. The son of a noble Javanese, he moves easily among the Dutch and their ideas and language but is prevented from enjoying their rights. He also falls desperately in love with the beautiful Indo-European Annelies, and it is through her and her extraordinary family that Minke finds the strength to embrace his world - the world of Indonesia - and all its beauty and possibility, brutality and anger.