Indonesia is a difficult place to write about, because of its inherent complexity and the contested views that surround it. And then there is the sheer time that it takes to get to know the place, or at least to begin to know it, or parts of it. No one book can definitively come to terms with Indonesia’s scattered geography and dozens of cultures, its aliran (streams of influence), religious factions, social strata, degrees of development and competing interests. For these reasons, few authors or even edited collections try their hand at Indonesia as such, usually preferring to focus on an aspect of its vast and fragmentary complexity. This has been particularly so in the post-Suharto period, not least with the plethora of edited volumes that have sought to explain rapidly changing events there.

But authors should be reasonably well informed, sensitive and, above all, honest. Theodore Friend has achieved these qualities with Indonesian Destinies, and has done so with remarkable depth and breadth through an engaging confluence of narrative styles. Friend, bringing together three and a half decades of personal involvement, offers not just a critique but a personal journey of exploration. Friend’s world view has been less changed by this experience than reinforced by it, not least by affronts to universal standards of acceptable social behaviour. In this respect, Friend sees his Indonesian friends and acquaintances as ‘Indonesian’, albeit of a multiplicity of types.