Why this book
This novel arrived in 1928, one of the first great works of modern Indonesian literature. Its Malay title, Salah Asuhan, means 'the wrong upbringing' — and Muis asks what happens when a colony teaches a boy to despise his own blood.
The Story
Meet Hanafi, a Minangkabau youth from Solok in West Sumatra. The Dutch schooled him well — too well. He speaks their language, wears their suits, admires their manners. Therefore he looks upon his own village and his mother's customs with quiet contempt, certain that Europe alone holds the light.
Hanafi reads Dutch novels, dreams of Holland, and measures every person against a European yardstick. He believes his education has lifted him above his origins. But this pride is a borrowed skin, and beneath it lies a man who does not truly know where he belongs.
In the town he loves Corrie du Bussée, a Eurasian girl, daughter of a French father and a native mother. They grew up as laughing friends. But colonial law draws a hard line: she is counted almost European, and he is merely a native. Therefore their closeness is already forbidden.
Corrie feels the danger too. She knows a marriage between them would leave their children stranded, belonging to no race and no people. Therefore, though her heart aches, she pulls away and departs for Batavia, leaving Hanafi behind with only his longing and his wounded pride.
Meanwhile Hanafi's widowed mother has her own plan. Years ago an uncle paid for Hanafi's schooling, and by Minangkabau custom that debt must be honored. Therefore she asks her son to marry the uncle's daughter, his cousin Rapiah — a gentle, humble village girl raised in the old ways.
Hanafi recoils. Rapiah is everything he has taught himself to scorn — traditional, unschooled, bound to the customs he wants to escape. But his mother pleads, honor demands it, and refusing would shame the family. Therefore, cold and resentful, he consents to a marriage he despises before it even begins.
So Hanafi weds Rapiah, but he gives her no love. He treats her as a servant, mocks her manners, and flaunts his coldness. Rapiah bears it all in silence, patient and dignified. Therefore the house fills with a quiet misery, and even the birth of their son, Syafei, cannot thaw him.
His mother watches the ruin of the marriage with a breaking heart. She had hoped custom and kindness would soften her son. But Hanafi only hardens, blaming her for chaining him to a life he never chose. Therefore the household holds three unhappy people bound by duty and no love.
Then chance intervenes. A rabid dog bites Hanafi, and the village clinic cannot treat him. Therefore he is sent to Batavia, the grand colonial capital, for the cure. For Hanafi this is no misfortune but a deliverance — an escape from the wife and the world he cannot bear.
In Batavia, fate returns Corrie to him. They meet again, and the old feeling rekindles, fierce and undeniable. Corrie is now alone, her father dead. But she remembers the warning in her heart and resists, telling Hanafi that a union of their two worlds can only end in ruin.
But Hanafi will not be denied. He sends word home dissolving his marriage to Rapiah, abandoning her and little Syafei without remorse. Then he petitions the colonial state to be declared legally European. Therefore, on paper at least, he sheds his birth and becomes the Western man he always craved to be.
Worn down by his ardor, Corrie at last relents. She loves him, and she lets herself hope the warnings were wrong. Therefore they marry, and for a brief season Hanafi believes he has finally won the life he dreamed of — a European wife, a European name, a European future.
Understand what Hanafi has entered. In colonial Batavia, race decides everything — where you live, whom you may greet, which chair you may take. He believed a European name would open every door. But a name cannot erase the blood that this rigid world insists on seeing first.
But the dream curdles fast. The European community will not accept a couple with native blood, and closes its doors against them. The Indonesians, in turn, see two people who have betrayed their own. Therefore Hanafi and Corrie find themselves stranded between the races — welcomed by neither, scorned by both.
Isolation poisons them. Cut off from every world, Hanafi grows jealous and suspicious, watching Corrie for signs of betrayal. She, lonely and stifled, wearies of his bitterness. Therefore the love that defied a whole society begins to rot from within, quarrel by quarrel, silence by silence.
At last a false accusation of unfaithfulness breaks them. Wounded beyond bearing, Corrie can take no more. Therefore she leaves Hanafi and goes away alone to Semarang, seeking to build a modest life apart from him. Hanafi, too proud to follow at once, lets her go.
Too late, remorse seizes Hanafi, and he races after her to make amends. But in Semarang cholera has swept the city, and Corrie has fallen gravely ill. He reaches her side only as death nears. Therefore their reunion is not a rescue but a farewell, whispered over a dying woman.
They forgive each other in those final hours, the old tenderness returning like a light already fading. Then Corrie dies in his arms. Therefore everything Hanafi sacrificed — his birth, his family, his people — is gone, and he is left utterly alone in a world that never wanted him.
Broken and hollow, Hanafi turns back toward Solok, the village he once despised. He hopes, perhaps, to find shelter among his own again. But the man who returns is a stranger to them now — neither the son who left nor the European he tried to become.
His mother receives him with a mother's mercy, and faithful Rapiah, whom he wronged so deeply, shows no hatred, only quiet grace. Their kindness ought to heal him. But Hanafi cannot forgive himself, cannot belong, cannot undo the years of scorn. Therefore even their love becomes a mirror of his ruin.
Despair closes over him completely. Seeing no place for himself in any world, Hanafi swallows a fatal dose of poison. His mother finds him too late. Therefore the man who reached so hard for another life ends his own, undone at last by the wrong upbringing that shaped him.
Only the child remains. Hanafi's mother and gentle Rapiah take little Syafei into their care, vowing to raise him rooted in his own people, sure of who he is. Therefore, out of so much wreckage, one small promise survives — that the next generation need not repeat the father's fatal confusion.
What it means
Hanafi's tragedy is not that he loved the wider world, but that he learned to hate his own. A person cut loose from their roots, taught to be ashamed of where they came from, belongs nowhere and breaks. To reach outward, Muis reminds us, you must first stand somewhere.
🎧 Read-along audio is being prepared — text-only for now.
