author
van Java Melati
1853–1927
Born in Semarang and writing under the name Melati van Java, she became one of the Dutch public’s popular novelists around the turn of the twentieth century. Her fiction often drew on life in the Dutch East Indies, blending romance, history, and social observation.
3 Audiobooks
Hermelijn
by van Java Melati
In Extremis
by van Java Melati
About the author
Born Nicolina Maria Christina Sloot in Semarang on January 13, 1853, she is better known by her pen name, Melati van Java. She was a Dutch writer born in the Dutch East Indies, and her work found a wide readership in the Netherlands around the start of the twentieth century.
Melati van Java wrote novels and stories that often connected Dutch readers to Java and the wider colonial world. Her books mixed emotional storytelling with historical and social themes, which helped make her a familiar name to many readers of her time.
She died in Noordwijk aan Zee on June 13, 1927. Today, she is remembered both for her popularity as a novelist and for the way her writing captured a particular literary view of the Dutch East Indies.