This article mentions Eka Kurniawan
Written by Maria Bustillos
Originally published in The New Yorker.
Feb 16, 2016



The best book that I read last year was a New Directions title, the novel “Beauty Is a Wound,” by the Indonesian writer Eka Kurniawan. Despite its warm reception in Indonesia, getting the book to American readers was a difficult undertaking. Its author had no M.F.A., no New York agent, no stories in quarterlies or journals—no “proof of concept,” as they say in business circles.