Ceremony

A coming-of-age tale, a tapestry of erotic and tragic liaisons, a dreamscape of nightmare and wonders, the novel Ceremony, is above all, a paean to the ceremony-rich life of the Benuaq Dayak, one ofthe many “upriver peoples” of Kalimantan. This very decidedly post-modern (and first) novel by Korrie Layun Rampan took the Indonesian literary scene by storm when it won the Jakarta Arts Council’s novel writing competition award in 1976. The author, relatively unknown at the time he received the award, went on to establish himself as one of Indonesia’s major literary figures, but after almost four decades, Ceremony retains its power to thrill, awe, and mystify readers. This edition is graced by an informative introduction by noted French scholar, Bernard Sellato, on the ritualized world of the Benuaq Dayak people and a critique of the original edition by Indonesian poet and translator Dodong Djiwapradja.¹

1. Lontar Foundation ↩