How a political prisoner’s novels gave Indonesia a sense of history

In the second week of January, Indonesian President Joko Widodo expressed deep regret for the country’s dark history of human rights violations, chief among them one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century: the slaughter of more than 500,000 suspected communist sympathisers in 1965-66 and imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of others. His speech was seen as a significant step in addressing the terrible crimes that have haunted Indonesia in the decades since, although surviving victims of the purge have questioned its value without an admission of the role the armed forces played in it.