Based on the novel by Louis Couperus, De Stille Kracht is set at the end of the nineteenth century and concerns the cultural gap between East and West, that is between the Netherlands and their colony on Java. The Dutch colonists, who nominally rule Java, realize that the island maintains its own natural order by way of a hidden force, goena goena, a term denoting magic as well as depths of eastern cultures that westerners cannot probe.