Kalimantaan

by C.S. Godshalk

A hundred and fifty years ago, a young Englishman founded a private raj on the coast of Borneo -- a jungle-covered land of headhunting Dyaks, mercurial Malays, and subversive overseas Chinese. The world he created, boasting stone quays, great swaths of lawn, three Christian churches, and musical levees, eventually encompassed a territory the size of England. Within this historical framework, C.S. Godshalk constructs an epic novel of vast imagination, beauty and drama. It is the story of Gideon Barr, the White Rajah, and his Ranee, two people whose perverse genius it was to miss every opportunity offered them to connect through love. In a world filled with pirates and adventurers, with headhunters, rogues, and religious madmen, Godshalk paints a vivid portrait of bravery and cowardice, and of a desire for order amid the curse of wildness.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Asia, Literary Fiction, Literature, Novels, Historical

472 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Christina Soccolich Godshalk (1942) is an American writer. After a stay of approximately twenty years in Southeast Asia, she wrote her only novel Kalimantaan, with which she debuted in 1998. The novel is set on Borneo. The Dutch translation appeared under the title Kalimantan. In the book, Godshalk gives a romanticized account of the expedition from James Brooke to Sarawak.

She now lives with her husband in Beverly, Massachusetts.

Reviews

[Mindy McAdams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful and lush, complex, mysterious, frightening -- the book is much like Borneo itself. It's not an easy place to visit, let alone to know. If you have a little familiarity with the history, I think you will go deep into this book, like the jungle, and succumb to its charms and incantations.

When I was in Sarawak, I resisted all traces of the so-called white rajahs. I felt disgusted by colonization, greedy trade practices and the subjugation of native groups. In every bookshop in that state you can find English books about the Raj and the reign of the British over the northwestern lands of Borneo. I bought none of them.

I knew this historical novel focused on a thinly veiled depiction of the first rajah and his younger British wife. Something overcame my distaste, and I picked it up. Now it haunts me, like the sound of the jungle at night, the quiet barefoot steps of Iban men on invisible trails, the unseen trophy heads, the close heat of the longhouse.

It's a flawed book but well worth the effort it asks. Where the book succeeds tremendously is in conveying the strange mixture of alienation and belonging that the British characters experience. The author chose wisely, I think, in never taking the reader into the mind or heart of any native of Borneo, but rather allowed the reader to develop an outsider's knowledge of them.

[Karl · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first 20 pages are a tough slog while you figure out who some of the characters are, via letters. You might want to write down a few of the names and the relationships to orient yourself, until you pass through that section and get to the main story. After that, this is one of maybe the top 20 books I've read. Gorgeous, lush prose. If you're interested in SE Asia (esp. Malaysian Borneo), you have to read this. Novelization of actual history of the Bornean White Rajahs.

[Kataklicik · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book deserves another star. Really. The plot is good, the writing is good. So why have I given it 4 and not 5 stars?

Because it needs finesse-ing. Really. You need to get over the horribly confusing amd disorienting 40-50 initial pages before you get to the good stuff (which literally then captures you and sweeps you away). Then you need to get over the myriad of Malay / Iban words that are NOT included in the glossary at the end of the book (you really DO need to understand these words to fully appreciate the nuances, and yes, I say this because I AM Malay). And lastly, you need to get over the many references of 'he' and 'she' which is confusing because there are a zillion and one characters and you're not sure to which character the author's referring to, which then leads to a whole lotta re-reading of paragraphs!)

One question though, Ms Godshalk - why dream up a fictional Gideon Barr when you could have written an epic novelisation of the Rajah Brooke himself?

[Robert Martin]

Ms. Godshalk is a most frustrating writer. Not only is her plotline opaque and desultory, her use of personal pronouns is confounding. One never knows who the referent is without a lot of work. All of this is worsened by the many exotic words/terms she uses without explanation.
This is sad especially because clearly she has a wonderful feel for the terrain, a feel I wanted to so much to enjoy but which eluded me in the thicket of peculiar vocabulary. I think there is a literary conceit here, a kind of intellectual arrogance, in which the reader is asked to accept the alien clime along with alien narration. Is Ms. Gotshalk sitting on a porch somewhere in Massachusetts enjoying her recondite success with prose no one can easily follow? I'm not sure I would even want to talk to her. I might never understand to what or whom she is referring. Definitely a book I would not recommend despite excellent research and excellent subject matter.
Bob

[Marlene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating; a mood of brooding mystery and impending catastrophe is established from the very first pages.

This book fails to receive my highest rating only because of the author's style which often leaves the antecedents of her pronouns unclear. Also, the glossary of foreign words could have been considerably enlarged; I often found myself consulting it to no avail.

[penta · Rating 4 out of 5]

[12 Books Challenge 2024 - 1/12]

Gdybym miała opisać "Kalimantan" jednym zdaniem, powiedziałabym, że jest to książka ocierająca się o geniusz. Tyle, i aż tyle, bo podczas lektury wiele razy czułam, jakby na wyciągnięciu ręki autorki znajdowała się perfekcja, którą ostatecznie zaledwie musnęła. Debiut (i jedyna wydana powieść) Godshalk to doskonały przykład zastosowania w narracji strumienia świadomości, pozostawiania czytelnika aż do końca w pewnym zawieszeniu, co właściwie się stało. Czuć, że autorka jest osobą niezwykle świadomą słowa, i każde zamieszanie z podmiotami ma konkretny cel, nadaje całości klimatu snu, przenosi nas na płaszczyzny niedopowiedzeń, błędnych wniosków, pogłosek. Jedynym, co namacalne, są listy, ustępy z dzienników oraz kluczowe wydarzenia historyczne, wokół których osnuta jest fabuła.

Godshalk nie interesuje fabularne odwzorowanie budowania papierowego imperium; wykorzystuje fundamenty faktów do subtelnej postkolonialnej narracji, a przede wszystkim - zgodnie z opisem zresztą - do studium miłości i szaleństwa, pokazując, że te dwie rzeczy stanowią często dwa oblicza jednej istoty rzeczy. Całość powieści stanowią przeplatające się fragmenty żyć mieszkańców radżatu, bohaterowie powracają ze swoimi perypetiami w chwili, gdy zaczynaliśmy już o nich zapominać, a finalnie każdemu bez wyjątku przeznaczony jest koniec, mniej lub bardziej przykry. Godshalk mistrzowsko pokazuje, że, aby czytelnika obchodziły losy postaci, nie potrzeba poświęcać im wiele czasu - jedynie nadać im cechy prawdziwych ludzi, tchnąć w nie iskrę życia, dając im nie tylko ambicje czy lęki, ale również drobne marzenia, przyzwyczajenia, upodobania. Pierwszy raz w życiu czułam potrzebę zaznaczania w książce fragmentów, by móc wrócić do konkretnych wątków.

Już podczas lektury pomyślałam, że to musi być jedna z książek, które zyskują, kiedy do nich wrócić ze znajomością całości - ponieważ, wbrew pozorom, fabuła nie toczy się całkowicie liniowo. Oprócz wieloznacznych wtrąceń zwiastujących nam dalsze losy niektórych bohaterów, które nigdy jednak nie toczą się tak, jak można by oczekiwać po momencie i tonie owych przepowiedni, przyszłość i przeszłość często splatają się w majakach bohaterów, w sygnałach wysyłanych im przez naturę Borneo, w całej jej magii i niewyjaśnionych tajemnicach. Wszystko w "Kalimantanie": język, treść, niedopowiedzenia, składa się na melodię, która hipnotyzuje podczas lektury.

Zdecydowanie nie żałuję, że po nią sięgnęłam, i niewątpliwie przeczytam ją ponownie w przyszłości.

[Felice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kalimantaan is based on the true story of Sir James Brooke. Brooke was an adventurer who two hundred years ago acquired/seized a kingdom, Sarawak, roughly the size of England on the northern coast of Borneo. Borneo is an island in the Pacific that is part of the Malay Archipelago. Brooke and his followers ruled Sarawak for approximately one hundred years. Brooke's exploits have already been fictionalized at least once before that I am aware of in Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim.

In Kalimantaan, Brooke is Gideon Barr. As the self-styled "Raj of Sarawak", Barr imposes his brand of civilization on the natives whose land he's stolen and any immigrants, missionaries or businessmen who have found their way to his world. His wife, Amelia, views the colonial life and it's contradictions quite differently than her British East India Company admiring husband. In Barr's private country Victorian civilities, self-importance and hypocrisy cover all manner of savagery by the whites and the love of tradition and celebration hide native barbarism. This is an environment that breeds cholera, smallpox and infection as easily as it does tyrants, madness and doom. Godshalk has inhabited Sarawak with varied and fascinating characters. There are not any levels of this society that are not examined and made important to the story.

This is not a novel about pioneers trying to conquer a hostile environment through hard work and sacrifice. Kalimantaan is about colonialism and empire building on a grandiose scale. Damn the locals and full speed ahead. The rewards are great and little is allowed to get in the way of those prizes. Godshalk has triumphed in this magnificent undertaking. There is plot and color to spare. She has woven her many characters complex stories and motives through a long gone world all the while dissecting it's mysteries and cruelties and celebrating it's beauty and culture.

Sadly Kalimantaan is currently out of print. If you are interested in novels about Victorian society, colonialism, imperialism, exotic cultures or really good writing then Kalimantaan is worth a search through a used bookstore.

[withdrawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this about 15 tests ago and recall being totally taken by it. It is fascinating. I recall feeling that I had been completely immersed in another world ... a world where various cultures come together and struggle for supremacy, some overtly, some subtly. Individuality stumbles in the face of cultural unity. Personal values become signs of betrayal. In the final analysis, one individual risks all.

A book for anyone who wants to be immersed.

[Tom Pinch · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books I have read in decades. Certainly on par with "The Innocents" (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) and "Lampedusa" (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...).

I had a very weird, strange, mysterious experience reading it. On opening the book, I found the style off-putting. And I literally put it down: this is too "literary," I said to myself. The style was unnatural, the register artificial. It is not a book for readers, it is a book for literary critics. Far is too conscious of style. Artificial. Away.

But it kept gnawing at me.

And I returned to it and -- could not put it down.
If you accept the style; if you take it at face value and let it carry you away, it does. Soon, you find yourself on the torrent of events and things and -- writhing in intense pleasure. This is a wonderful gorgeous book.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

p.66 (re: Selladin)
He was one of those who carried Islam not in his head or in his words but in his blood...His fault was one frequently found among them: a monstrous dread of shame... He was, at bottom, a man whose wife was coveted by another.
p.82 (Bigelow says...)
...she's a nice female little woman and he must love her pocket, for the tribe he's producing."

from San Francisco Chronicle review (Brian St. Pierre)
"By vividly dramatizing the complications of women, Godshalk has filled in the blanks of past adventure stories. Readers will never think of Kipling or Conrad in quite the same way again."

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a great blend of a history book and fiction. The first few chapters are confusing while the author sets up the story and the characters, but it’s really worth it for when we get to Amelias perspective. Her story is the most compelling one to read. That, alongside the descriptions of nature are the best parts of the book. It also does an amazing job at showing how colonization actually works, the small incremental steps involved. The story doesn’t shy away from the brutality of the Europeans towards the natives, and it shows over and over again how the Europeans don’t belong there and have no place in that country.

[Virginia Walter · Rating 4 out of 5]

This richly described, dense historical novel is based on the life of a real British adventurer who created his own raj on the island of Borneo in the mid-nineteenth century. We see this world -- the tropical landscape, the Chinese merchants and the Malay headhunters, the other British settlers -- through many different perspectives, but perhaps the most interesting is that of Melie the young bride he brings from England.

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author wrote a 'guide' on how to read this book. I kept shuttling between 'what a terrible writer' to 'brilliant'. It is a complicated narration but oh so worth the read. Perhaps the author recommends in her 'guide' that the reader make a schema of characters as they appear, because one would be lost without.
After grumbling right through the first reading, I went back to a second and loved it.
The thing about Godshalk .... this is her first book published.

[Christine Benagh · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a really great book in there somewhere. Brookes' story is marvelous; the mood is wonderful and evocative. The climax is outstanding, but, OMG, the narrative needs work.

The introduction is a total slog--and, then, who cares that he had deep personal problems after losing his mother. Then, the narrator shifts many times, but Godshalk does not know how to signal the shifts or identify the narrator's' place/s in the plot. How's that for creative punctuation?

[Meg · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book better than I did. The glossary of native names and words is horribly incomplete and so generated increasing irritation as I flipped back and forth and ended up confused too many times. The careless use of pronouns also annoyed me. Otherwise the writing was very good, and I especially liked the chapters dealing with the Ranee's point of view.

[Mark · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is one of my quickest rejects ever. About five pages. I kept thinking, if the writing doesn't get more direct and transparent soon, I'm outta here, and I am. Too bad, because the theme -- an actual kingdom set up by a white settler in Borneo -- was fascinating.

[Josh Reid · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating, character-driven examination of English colonizers in Borneo. It was a challenging read at times, but rewarding in its poignant language. Having a glossary of characters and places would've really helped.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

A novel that, in its convolutions of plot and dense plots, may leave you feeling like you've been somewhere very hot and sticky for a very long time. And in that regard, its style exactly matches its subject. I liked this novel very much.

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful. Gives a real insight into an almost unknown world.

[Gabriela · Rating 5 out of 5]

still 5 stars

[Fred · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most brilliant, absorbing, engrossing prose - a book to conjure with - astonishing that not everyone gives this 5 stars. A privilege to have been introduced to it and read.

[Christiane · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

My automatic mental rating while reading this book oscillated wildly. Before the women disembarked in Borneo I was ready to give up on it (2 stars), with the introduction of the female element the story got a lot more complex, personal and interesting (4 stars) but towards the end it dragged on quite a bit (3 stars).

Apart from its length, my main problem with this book is the style. Had I known that the author was going to throw a cast of (seemingly) hundreds of characters and a vast number of place names at me I would have made a detailed list from the start. This problem is exacerbated by Ms Godshalk’s annoying insistence on using personal pronouns instead of names and leaving it to the reader to sort things out (e.g. a paragraph starts as follows : “She said she would not, but at the last moment she did. He would look for her, wish to see her…”. (Who is she, who is he and why would she not and then did ?)

The whole book seems to be written in a deliberately confusing, round-about, unclear, vague, weird and inscrutable way, another indication of which is the great number of Dyak and Malay words not listed in the hopelessly inadequate glossary.

There is no flow; the short chapters (some headed by enigmatic texts) are more like vignettes; paragraphs end abruptly; crucial events are sprung upon the unsuspecting reader and due to the fractured style, the sense of time is lost : seasons come and go, people arrive and leave, babies are born and die and it all seems like a long, long time when actually it isn’t and the female protagonist is still a young woman.

On the positive side, the writing is often very beautiful. There are some gorgeous passages, mainly those describing Borneo, its rivers, steaming low-lands, mountains and forests, the lush vegetation, the untold number of animal species, the unbearable heat and humidity below and the fresh crystal clear air above, the sea and the islands.

There are also some interesting – mainly Caucasian, mainly female – characters who come to life in the story while the Dyaks, the Malays and the Chinese are not given much personality and remain vague throughout.

Apart from greed, lust for power, ruthlessness, cruelty, superstition, loneliness, loss, hate and revenge a lot of space in the book is given over to love in all its expressions : filial and parental, marital and adulterous, soulful, romantic, platonic, passionate, selfish, unselfish, requited, unrequited, licit, illicit, pure, calculating, long-lasting or brief, and those for me were the best parts of the book and the reason why I might one day read it again (with a detailed list).

P.S. Some nitpicking : the word “siege” is misspelt 3 times as “seige” and “beseiged”.

[Celina · Rating 2 out of 5]

The best thing about this book was the cover design. I must have gotten a first edition on remainder because there was no landscape illustration, only the golden diamond in the center and an all-over print of a supremely creepy batik pattern. The pages between the covers did not make an impression at all. I remember the plot and characters only barely. What struck me was how unexciting such a potentially arresting situation could be.

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I adore this book. I read it once 20 years ago and it stayed with me until I read it again. In neither case did I understand everything. But that doesn’t matter. Reading this book is like being immersed in a foreign land. Some things are clear, some things are not, many are misunderstood. But the sheer poetry and power of the writing carried me through the dense, breathing, magical scenery and experience of the European characters.

[Cindy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn't get past the first 115 pages. I didn't know what the hell was going on in the story. I read that it's tough to get into but eventually it's wonderful. I don't have the patience to wade through while waiting for that to happen. Maybe some day I'll try again.

[Megan]

DNS 7/14/2021

[Jo]

DNF - The plot was interesting, but I did not like the writing.

[Joel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kalimantaan is a very informative and fascinating tale about a period of history and a region of the world hardly known at all in the West. The story is apparently based on an actual English adventurer who, during the height of Britain's empirical feeding frenzy, stumbled onto an incredible opportunity to feed his megalomania as well as his obsession with memories of his dead mother. By a combination of blind ambition and pure dumb luck, he was able to establish (under the Crown) a raj, or kingdom, on the island of Borneo that in fact survived for decades despite incredible odds, constant disease, and tribes of warring headhunters.

But although the subject itself fascinated me, the writing was extremely difficult to follow. The author has a true gift for intentionally(?) obfuscating the narrative and confusing her readers, particularly by her nearly maddening use of pronouns with no clear antecedent. In a paragraph, for instance, with no less than seven "he"s or "him"s but no proper names, the persistent reader may eventually break the code to discover that the seven pronouns refer to at least four different men. I can only surmise that her editor must have been in on the joke. Or perhaps they agreed that such an approach would make readers spend more quality time savoring (a.k.a. re-reading) each page.

Still, given that the story itself was largely factual - including a cast of misfits and despots that would seem outlandish even in a work of fiction - for me, the plot outweighed the difficulties of reading it. If you're a fan of historical fiction, I recommend this book highly.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

"If he had reflected on his position at that (any) moment, on the absurdity of it, it might have created a vacuum in which the whole edifice would have collapsed on his head. He did not reflect." Kalimantaan is the tale of a boy making his life, and incidentally is also the story of leadership and followership in society. He set out with a vision of the king he would become, and in naiveté blundered along clueless, too ignorant to be fearful, but fortunate. And he pursued it with such speed that "maleficence lost its grip". And those he came upon saw him as they expected him to be, not as the vulnerable child he was, and so were cowed and followed him. And within the years of this grace period, between assumption and reality, he became who they expected him to be, and who he had set out to become.

Exotic locale, life in the wildest reaches of the Earth, biological warfare, love, lust, marriage … story after story are told within this story.

My only complaint has been voiced already by others: the nearly constant failure to identify the subject of a pronoun causes the reader to, over and over again, flip around to figure out, or guess, at who is being discussed in a paragraph. I think the problem occurs from strict diligence to the letter artifice used to set up the narrative voice. She clung too strongly to it. Yes, I mean Godshalk.

[Dara Salley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a colonialist novel written in the modern day, with post-colonialist concepts firmly in place. If that sounds a little confusing, it was. Godshalk writes in the voice of a 19th century explorer very convincingly. There are various gritty details that betray the modernity of the author. There is information about feminine hygiene and sexual relations that would not have been included in a true 1800’s novel. That is one of Godshalk’s goals, to allow the reader to delve deeper into a colonial trip than a primary source would allow.

The beating heart of this novel has two chambers; the engulfing Caribbean atmosphere and the love that flourishes among the denizens of Kalimantaan, both European and native. Godshalk takes a compassionate but honest view of the romantic livers of her characters. The Victorian Europeans are in a land away from time, cut off from the repressive social strictures of their compatriots, but still feeling their sway. The native people have their own agendas, often hidden from the reader, but they are caught in the same cycles of love and death and the colonialists.