Cast But One Shadow

Cast But One Shadow is based on a true story. During the Japanese war in South-east Asia, a little Dutch girl. Bertha Hertog, was left in Indonesia by her parents and brought up in an Indonesian village by an Indonesian woman. When she grew up, her foster mother, in true tradition, arranged a marriage for her, which the young Bertha did not appear to resent, with an Indonesian young man, a well-educated teacher; but at that juncture the parents returned and claimed back their daughter. The foster mother claimed that the child had been adopted by her. A judge in Singapore ruled that Bertha should be returned to her Dutch parents, and this set off a riot which lasted two days and in which many lives were lost. In Cast But One Shadow, Han Suyin has changed the setting by making the little girl French, and putting her in a Buddhist instead of an Islamic environment. But she was not satisfied with a straight story of unidimensional events. What really interests her is not the event itself, but its echo, its repercussions. In short, she asks; what happens in the heart of the man, the woman, the child, subject to the upheaval of war, uprooted from one culture and thrust into another?


Genre: Literary Fiction