Love and Death in Bali

Author/Guide: Vicki Baum

Why a Booktrail?

Early 1900s: Set against the backdrop of the Dutch invasion of Bali

ISBN: 978-0804841801
Genre: Fiction, Historical

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What you need to know before your trail

Love and Death in Bali is the story of a passionate yet peaceful and deeply spiritual people who defy the Dutch imperial forces through an act that would bring them certain death–and certain rebirth. The looting of a Chinese trading ship gives the Dutch colonial forces the perfect excuse to intervene in island affairs, but they encounter astonishing resistance. In the battle of Badung, wave upon wave of Balinese clothed in white ceremonial garb charged into the blazing Dutch guns, kris daggers in hand, prepared to die. Who among them will survive, and how will their lives be forever changed?

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Travel Guide

Travel to Bali BookTrail style

Love and Death in Bali, first published in German in 1937, is considered by many to be the finest novel ever written about this island paradise where everyone, regardless of caste or position, is woven into the fabric of an ancient culture, connected by customs and, above all, by strong religious beliefs. now reissued in a completely re-edited edition under its original title, with an introduction by anthropologist and award-winning author Nigel Barkley.

“It must, I think, have been in 1916, a time when Europe was too much preoccupied to remember the existence of a little island called Bali, that I came by chance into the possession of some very beautiful photographs..

…I kept turning again and again to these pictures of men, beasts and landscapes, whenever the horrors omy generation was exposed to – war, revolution, inflation, emigration became unbearable.”

Dutch rule over Bali came much later than in other parts of the East Indies, such as Java and Maluku. Another difference was that it was never as well established. The so-called Dutch period lasted only until Imperial Japan occupied Bali in 1942, for the duration of World War II.

In 1597, the Dutch explorer Cornelis de Houtman arrived on the island. The Dutch East India Company was established in 1602.