Dutch · Advanced
Read Goena-Goena in Dutchwith every sentence explained
P.A. Daum · 1889
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About the book
Goena-Goena by P.A. Daum was first published in 1889. In Passage you read the full text in the original Dutch, marked advanced and filed under historical fiction, horror and mystery and crime. It runs to about 69,000 words.
A sleepy garrison town on Java. An unhappy marriage. And whispers of black magic in the servants' quarters.
Notary Jean Bronkhorst is a respected man in a small Javanese town: prosperous, reliable, a little bored, and married to Marie, a Dutch-born wife who has never felt at home in the Indies. Next door, the quarrelsome Captain Borne is landed with guests for an indefinite stay — his wife's niece Betsy and her husband, a coffee planter who has lost his post.
Betsy is lively, musical and irresistible, and desperately unhappy in her marriage. Soon the notary, a boastful planter named Prédier and half the town fall under her spell. Meanwhile, in the kitchens and back rooms, the old servants know a surer way to win a heart or break one: goena-goena, the secret magic of the Indies.
Written by P.A. Daum, the sharpest chronicler of colonial life, Goena-Goena is a witty, unsentimental novel of gossip, card games, ambition and desire under the tropical sun.
- Author
- P.A. Daum
- First published
- 1889
- Language
- Dutch
- Level
- Advanced
- Genre
- Historical Fiction, Horror, Mystery and Crime
- Length
- About 69,000 words
How it opens
Charles Prédier kwam met een vergenoegd gezicht het kantoor uit.
Nu was alles in orde; nu was zijn fortuin gemaakt! Terwijl hij het zweet van z’n voorhoofd veegde—het pleiten voor eigen zaak maakt zoo warm!—drukte hij de zwart leeren portefeuille, die hij onder den arm droeg, met liefde tegen zijn borst. Het had moeite gekost den notaris over te halen, geld te steken in de nieuwe koffie-onderneming; doch nu het gelukt was, ging het overige vanzelf; nu zou het kapitaal gauw genoeg bijeenkomen; er zou gebouwd en geplant kunnen worden, en binnen een jaar of vier......
Reading Goena-Goena in Passage
Passage sets the book as a quiet, paginated reader in Dutch. Read at your own pace, and when a sentence stops you, tap it. You get:
- a natural translation of that exact sentence,
- a short note on the grammar, in plain words,
- the key words, which you can save with the sentence they came from,
- all of it in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Turkish or Portuguese, whichever you read best.
It's marked advanced, with richer vocabulary and longer sentences. If it feels heavy, start with an intermediate Dutch book and come back to it. The words you save come back later in short review games, so the book keeps teaching after you close it.
