No other Dutch author from the nineteenth century inspired as many pens as did Multatuli, the pseudonym of Eduard Douwes Dekker (1820-1887). And no other novel caused so much upheaval as his Max Havelaar, of de koffij-veilingen der Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij (Max Havelaar, or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company) (1860). With his condemnation of the exploitation of the Javanese as well as his plea for personal rehabilitation, he attracted instant attention as an author. As late as 2002 Dutch men of letters chose it as the best book in national literary history. Over time the book has been translated into approximately 40 languages, including Russian, Chinese and Esperanto.

It is quite extraordinary to see how soon after the publication of this book adaptations of Multatuli's work appeared. In 1860, for instance, the composer Richard Hol had already set to music the dramatic passage ‘Ik weet niet waar ik sterven zal’ (I don't know where I will die), by the elegiac song of Saidjah. It was not the last time that Multatuli's novel would inspire artists to create adaptations. In 1871 for example, Max Havelaar appeared as a play with five scenes. Even in the twentieth century the book inspired adaptations: Fons Rademakers produced a film in 1976, and eleven years later – 1987, the Multatuli-year – Max Havelaar the musical went into premiere, and as recently as 2005 a stage adaptation was made.

It is not only his novel that has elicited interest. Between 1950 and 1995 Multatuli's complete works were published in 25 volumes, several Multatuli biographies were written, a magazine was named after him, and in the Netherlands as well as in Indonesia streets were named after him. Furthermore, there is a Multatuli Museum in Amsterdam, as well as an Eduard Douwes Dekker nursing home. For a long time ‘Max Havelaar’ was the brand name for what is now called ‘Fair Trade’. Even though people have alluded to a statue for him since soon after his death, it materialised only in 1987 in Amsterdam. That especially Finnish people seem to enjoy being photographed in front of the statue is probably related to the fact that the word ‘Multatuli’ (which the author had taken over from Latin, meaning ‘I have suffered a lot’) has a sexual connotation in Finnish.