Paul Adriaan Daum

Paul Adriaan Daum (1850–1898) was a Dutch journalist and novelist whose writing grew out of his years in the Dutch East Indies. Born in The Hague, he went to the Indies in 1879 and made his career in Batavia’s press. In 1885 he founded the Bataviaasch Nieuwsblad, where he also published fiction under the name Maurits. His newspaper work gave him a close view of colonial life and its social divisions, material he turned into vivid, often sharply observant stories. Daum belongs to an important early generation of Dutch-language writers in the Indies, whose fiction looked closely at the society around them rather than treating the colony simply as an exotic backdrop.

Among his best-known titles are Uit de suiker in de tabak, Goena-goena, De Van der Lindens c.s. and Aboe Bakar. Across his work, Daum returned to the pressures of status, money and ambition, and to the everyday workings of colonial households and institutions. His prose is direct and economical, with an eye for revealing details and an ironic edge that can expose the gap between people’s public respectability and private motives. He often built his fiction from the kinds of situations and characters familiar to readers of the newspapers, giving his portraits a sense of immediacy. Daum’s work remains a useful, engaging way into the social world of the nineteenth-century Indies. Explore his titles here and discover the range of his writing for yourself.