Never the Twain

Never the Twain, the translation of the novel ‘Salah Asuhan’ by Abdoel Moeis, was first published in 1928 as an allegory of the struggle of the Indonesian community in finding a national identity during Indonesian pre-independence. The story is told thorough Hanafi, a young Indonesian who received a Western education and fell in love with Western culture as well as a European girl, Corrie du Buse. Conflicts arise between Hanafi and his family who still hold traditional Eastern values and as an Indonesian, Hanafi is unable to participate as a full-blooded European. He faces the choices of a person who is no longer grounded in the East, but also has not been fully accepted into the West.