Revolusi : Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World by David Van Reybrouck (PRE-ORDER)

DATE OF RELEASE: 22 MAY 2025

Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize 2024

Shortlisted for the Cundill Prize

A story of staggering scope and drama, Revolusi is the masterful and definitive account of the epic revolution that changed the course of the 20th century.

'Astounding . . . history at its best' Yuval Noah Harari 'Utterly compelling . . . astonishing' Financial Times 'Superb' Guardian

On a sunny morning in August 1945, a handful of tired people raised a homemade cotton flag and announced the birth of a new nation: Indonesia. For three and a half centuries, its people had been subject to Dutch colonial rule.

It would take another four years of guerrilla warfare and resistance – the ‘Revolusi’ – to finally win their freedom, blazing a trail that would reshape the world. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and eye-witness testimonies, David Van Reybrouck’s superbly woven narrative is alive with human detail at every turn, showing Indonesia’s struggle for independence to be one of the defining dramas of the twentieth century.

A Financial Times, Evening Standard, History Today and Prospect Best Book of the Year

Paperback 

Publication: 22 May 2025, Vintage

ISBN: 9781529931525

Extent: 656 pages