
Translated by Annie Tucker
Format: Paperback, English
160 page(s)
ISBN/ISBN13: /978-0811225649
Published Aug 01, 2017 by New Directions
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Also see Seperti Dendam, Rindu Harus Dibayar Tuntas
Vivid, bawdy, comic, and arresting, the exciting new novel by the Indonesian phenomenon, Eka Kurniawan
Told in short, cinematic bursts, Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash is gloriously pulpy. Ajo Kawir, a lower-class Javanese teenage boy excited about sex, likes to spy on fellow villagers in flagrante, but one night he ends up witnessing the savage rape of a beautiful crazy woman by two policemen. Deeply traumatized, he becomes impotent. His efforts to get his virility back all fail, and Ajo Kawir turns to fighting as a way to vent his frustrations. He gets such a fearsome reputation as a brawler that he is hired to kill a thug named The Tiger, but instead Ajo Kawir falls in love with Iteung, a gorgeous female bodyguard who works for the local mafia. Alas, the course of true love never did run smooth… Fast-forward a decade. Now a truck driver, Ajo Kawir has reached a new equanimity, thinking that his penis may be trying to teach him a lesson and even consulting it in many situations as if it were his guru―love may yet triumph.
Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash shows Eka Kurniawan in a gritty, comic, pungent mode that fans of Quentin Tarantino will appreciate. But even with its liberal peppering of fights, high-speed car chases, and ladies heaving with desire, the novel continues to explore Kurniawan’s familiar themes of female agency in a violent male world dominated by petty criminals and a corrupt police state.
— Scott Pactor in Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash (2017) by Eka Kurniawan (Personal Blog, May 06, 2020)
— Annie Tucker in Of Sleeping Birds and Limp Dicks (Popula, Aug 07, 2018)
— Adam Rivett in Eka Kurniawan’s Vengeance Is Mine is limp venture into violence (Australian, The, Jan 13, 2018)
— Jessie Neilson in One for fans of Tarantino-type violence (Otago Daily Times, Nov 06, 2017)
— Tiffany Tsao in Pulp horror (Mekong Review, Nov 01, 2017)
— Preeja Aravind in Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash: Review (Free Press Journal, The, Oct 22, 2017)
— Jackson Arn in Jackson Arn reviews Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash by Eka Kurniawan (Asymptote, Oct 19, 2017)
— Emily Paull in Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash is a standout title, but falls flat (AU Review, The, Oct 09, 2017)
— Cameron Woodhead in Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash review: Eka Kurniawan’s pulp dark comedy (The Sydney Morning Herald, Sep 28, 2017)
— Jane Yong Kim in Eka Kurniawan’s Darkly Comic Tale of Boyhood (Atlantic, The, Sep 15, 2017)
— Keshava Guha in This bird also rises (Hindu, The, Sep 15, 2017)
— Tim Hannigan in “Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash” by Eka Kurniawan (Asian Review of Books, Sep 14, 2017)
— Tony Malone in ‘Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash’ by Eka Kurniawan (Review) (Personal Blog, Sep 07, 2017)
— in Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash (Publishers Weekly, Sep 04, 2017)
— Suzi Feay in Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash by Eka Kurniawan — street fighter (Financial Times, Aug 18, 2017)
— Bradley Babendir in Impotent Rage: Eka Kurniawan’s “Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash” (Los Angeles Review of Books, Aug 16, 2017)
— CR in Eka Kurniawan: Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash (The Saturday Paper, Aug 05, 2017)
— Bron Sibree in Eka Kurniawan’s brutal novel on Indonesian masculinity is not for the faint-hearted (South China Morning Post, Jul 19, 2017)
— in Riding high: The secrets of Indonesia’s finest novelist (The Economist, Jul 13, 2017)
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