The Books We’re Reading Now

Four DestinAsian editors suggest four bestselling titles to help pass the time while staying at home. Man Tiger, Eka Kurniawan I was drawn to the magic realism of Laura Esquivel and Gabriel García Márquez while in high school, and not long after relocating to Indonesia four years ago, I began to feel that my new home was fertile ground for a similar kind of fiction writing. Indonesia has a rich tradition of folklore that exerts a certain influence on modern life. Even today, there’s a deeply entrenched belief in superstition, haunted trees, inanimate objects with mystical powers, and all kinds of supernatural beings. So, when a literature-loving friend introduced me to the works of Eka Kurniawan—who has been hailed as a successor to the late and great Indonesian novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer—I was immediately captivated.