Barefoot Guerrillas
Sunday, May 27th, 2007
An awakening…two occupied homelands…a young woman’s personal growth.Melati’s journey took her from a cloistered Swiss boarding school to the guerrilla camps of a scorched earth. Her own personal growth from a naive school girl to an independent young woman closely parallels the struggle for independence of her reclaimed homeland.
Harumi Wanasita tells the story of one woman, Melati. She also tells the story of a generation. The Dutch-Indonesian descent people at the time of Indonesia’s declaration of independence were the last generation of their culture. This is their story.
Reflecting the maturing of her character, Harumi varies her writing style as Melati develops. Naive at first for Melati’s wide-eyed innocence, the style is gradually refined as the novel moves through wartime Holland and Melati’s life with the guerrilla fighters in revolutionary Indonesia.
Through all the experiences which make Melati’s story, Harumi retains a language and style reminiscent of an earlier simpler time, when innocence was its own reward.
August 1996
First Edition, Paperback
371pp, 215 x 138 mm
ISBN 0 9587718 5 5
RRP $aud 21.95
The Author
Harumi Wanasita was born in Indonesia during the Dutch colonial period. After education in Europe, she returned to Indonesia during the 1945 – 49 struggle for independence.
Now a widow, Harumi’s former husband was Dr Danudirdjo Setiabuddhi, known before the Indonesian revolution as Dr. E. F. E. Douwes Dekker, who was declared an Indonesian national hero for his support for the nationalist revolution.
Her later husband was the late Major Wayne D. Evans, U.S.A.F.
Harumi has been published in Indonesia, with her works in Dutch and Indonesian appearing during the 1950s. Harumi now lives in San Jose, California. This novel, her first book published in English, is based largely on her own life as a young woman in occupied Holland and revolutionary Indonesia.