Publication Day Desk

Publication day for Belgian historian David Van Reybrouck’s Revolusi is off to a good start with a ‘Book of the Day’ review in the Guardian where reviewer Charlie English calls it ‘superb’.

This adds to the raft of admiring pre-publication quotes from the likes of Yuval Harari ('Astounding . . . history at its best'), Peter Frankopan ('A wonderful and important book'), JM Coetzee ('A masterly display of the historian’s craft') and Pankaj Mishra ('Revolusi briskly ushers Indonesia onto the centre stage of modern history').

Drawing on hundreds of interviews and eye-witness testimonies, David Van Reybrouck turns the vast and complex story on Indonesia’s struggle for independence from Dutch colonial rule into an utterly gripping narrative that is alive with human detail at every turn. A landmark publication, Revolusi shows Indonesia's uprising to be one of the defining dramas of the twentieth century and establishes its author as one of the most gifted narrative historians at work in any language today.

Credit must also go to the other two Davids – David Colmer and David McKay – for their masterful translation.

Author photo © Stefan Vanfleteren