Max Havelaar - Or the Coffee Auctions of a Dutch Trading Company (Penguin classic)

Based on the author's actual experiences, Max Havelaar is one of the most forceful indictments of colonialism ever written. Its portrayal of colonial cruelty in Indonesia is rendered in prose that ranges from colloquial informality to cadences of biblical resonance, and the sophistication of its satire led D. H. Lawrence to compare it to the works of Swift, Gogol, and Twain.