A series of four books which chronicle the birth of modern Indonesia through the story of Minke, an aspiring Javanese writer. In the first two books, Minke begins his education into the ways of the Europeon colonialists but tragedy strikes and he loses his first love. By the third book, Footsteps, Minke is beginning to find his feet as a political organizer and the stirrings of Indonesian Nationalism are being felt. The books are set in the last decade of the 19th and the first decade of the 20th century, and give a historical picture of the varied culture of the Dutch East Indies, as well as a deep understanding of a people's painful emergence from colonial domination. The two previous books are This Earth of Mankind and Child of All Nations.