Sumur: Sebuah Cerita

“The Well,” a short story authored by Eka Kurniawan, is an allegory about the grim toll of climate change, which irrevocably changes people’s relationship to the land and to each other. In the story, water becomes at once a tangible element and a metaphor for connection and renewal, both of which are lost due to the cascading scarcity effects of warming temperatures and shifting weather patterns. Told in an unusually melancholy register for Kurniawan, “The Well” is at once a commentary on Indonesia’s very real and interconnected problems of rapid urbanization, land mismanagement, drought, and polluted waterways and a striking meditation on the infinite—and sometimes, sadly finite—resources of the human heart.¹

1. Annie Tucker ↩