THE TEA LORDS – Novel, by Hella Haasse

The Tea Lords, the story of ambitious Rudolf Kerkhoven, who becomes a tea planter in the Dutch East Indies. Bitten by the East Indies adventure, in the early 1870s he takes ship for Java, and plunges into the uncleared jungle foothills of the mountains (west Java), to follow his father as a tea planter. Over the seasons, Rudolf’s diligence gradually transform the land into a productive estate for tea. Haasse based her documentary novel on documents. When he arrives in Java, he is immediately smitten by landscapes and the islands life. The Tea Lords, lusciously atmospheric and masterfully drawn, this is an unforgettable story of aspiration, rivalry and romance, always on a tropical plantation. Reading you might agree that it is more in the nature of an marvellously achieved improvisation, that only a novelist of the greatest imagination, Hella Haasse, could have written.

https://www.amazon.com/Tea-Lords-Hella-S-Haasse/dp/1846271711?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0