In this article Night of a Thousand Hells Intan Paramaditha
By John Self, originally published in Observer
Oct 17, 2026
Read the full article here.
By John Self, originally published in Observer
Oct 17, 2026
This is a tale of three sisters. Isn’t it always?” This winking comment near the beginning of Indonesian author Intan Paramaditha’s second novel is a canny indicator of what to expect: a novel that draws on tradition – a mystery, a family saga, a crime story – but is playful, too.
We might expect such a knowing approach from Paramaditha, whose debut novel The Wandering (translated in 2020 from the 2017 Indonesian original) took the form of a choose-your-own-adventure book, allowing the chapters to be read in a multitude of different sequences; and whose story collection Apple and Knife (2018) recalled the fantastical body horror of Carmen Maria Machado or Mariana Enríquez.
We might expect such a knowing approach from Paramaditha, whose debut novel The Wandering (translated in 2020 from the 2017 Indonesian original) took the form of a choose-your-own-adventure book, allowing the chapters to be read in a multitude of different sequences; and whose story collection Apple and Knife (2018) recalled the fantastical body horror of Carmen Maria Machado or Mariana Enríquez.
Read the full article here.
Aditya Irawan/NurPhoto via Getty Images
