The islands described in this highly original collection of stories are divorced from the particularities of locale. They are a symbolic setting for those whom Herman Melville called "isolatoes"--people who live with constant loneliness, who occasionally break out of it, but who often encounter tragedy when they make an attempt. With a taut prose style, Alberts treats the modern theme of estrangement in memorable tales of discovery, surprise, death, and love. Equal to the highest standards of contemporary fiction, the stories in this book bring to the English-speaking world the writing of one of the outstanding Dutch writers of Indonesia.