Maria Dermoût (15 June 1888 – 27 June 1962) was an Indo-European novelist, considered one of the greats of Dutch literature and as such an important proponent of Dutch Indies literature. In December 1958 Time magazine praised the translation of Maria Dermoût's The Ten Thousand Things, and named it one of the best books of the year. Whitney Balliett of The New Yorker wrote: "Mrs. Dermout, in the manner of Thoreau and the early Hemingway, is an extraordinary sensualist. [...] in passages of a startling, unadorned, three-dimensional clarity; often one can almost touch what she describes." Biography Dermoût was a Dutch novelist born on a sugar plantation in Pati, Java, Dutch East Indies, and educated in the Netherlands, who wrote in Dutch. After completing her education she returned to Java, where she married and travelled extensively across Java and the Moluccas with her husband. In 1933 her husband was pensioned, and the couple returned to the Netherlands. Maria Dermoût was widowed in 1952. Dermoût died in The Hague in 1962. She is the subject of the biography Geheim Indië. Het leven van Maria Dermoût 1888-1962 ("The Secret East Indies. The Life of Maria Dermoût 1888-1962") in 2000 by the Indo-European (Dutch-Indonesian) author Kester Freriks. Body of work Dermoût turned to writing early in life, but remained largely unpublished until she was 63. She wrote two novels, both of which were not published until she was in her sixties: The Ten Thousand Things (De tienduizend dingen, 1955) and Days Before Yesterday — also published as Just Yesterday (Nog pas gisteren, 1951). There are English translations of her novels by Hans Koning. Some of her short stories were published in translation in magazines such as Vogue during the 1960s. In Dutch, five short-story collections by her were also published. She is viewed as one of the giants among Dutch-Indies literary writers, and The Ten Thousand Things in particular is widely regarded as an idiosyncratic masterpiece. The book has been translated into thirteen languages. As Hans Koning puts it in his Introduction to the New York Review Books edition of the novel: "Dermoût was sui generis, a case all her own. She did not write about her Indies as a Dutch woman, or as a Javanese or an Ambonese. Hers was a near-compassionate disdain for the dividing lines, the hatreds and the fears ... She painted landscapes, still lifes and people in a