They Say I’m a Monkey

They Say I’m a Monkey is a collection of short-stories from the young Indonesian writer Djenar Maesa Ayu.

In the eleven stories, Djenar turns footnotes of urban Jakarta life, and the inner lives of the city’s inhabitants, into stories that keep in their narratives both the magic and the realism of the place. Stories that will crawl out from the margins into the centre of your conscience.

When They Say I’m a Monkey first appeared in Bahasa Indonesia in 2002, it shocked readers with its liberal use of sex, both as a central theme in many of the stories and as the template for Djenar imageries.