Never the Twain

Never the Twain is one of the most popular works in Indonesian modern fiction. Hanafi, the protagonist, is madly in love with Corrie du Bussee, a beautiful Eurasian, although he is already betrothed to his cousin Rapiah. Who should he marry? Corrie the liberated Western woman or the tradition-bound Rapiah? The main conflict is an allegory of pre-independence Indonesia when - as it struggled to have a national identity - the nation had to choose between adhering to traditional values or adopting Western notions of progress and modernity.