Review: The Wandering by Intan Paramaditha

In 2018, Intan Paramaditha and Stephen J. Epstein brought a literary gift to the English-speaking world. Apple and Knife was an intensely smart, sharp, scathing, witty, and innovative collection of short stories that reframed folk and fairy tales from the world over; digging up old tales and making them relevant to the modern world, moulded by feminism. Now, in 2020, we get to see what the creative mind of Intan Paramaditha can do with a full-length novel. The answer? The Wandering: a dense piece of literary fiction in the shroud of a choose-your-own-path adventure story. What else could we expect from the author who brought us one of 2018’s best short story collections? The Wandering is a dense novel of branching paths inspired by the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books of old. But while those books were fantastical, and written for kids to experiment with their own imaginations, The Wandering is a story of migration, of searching the world for happiness and hoping that it will be found over the next page (or if you turn to page 42).