‘The Dog Meows, The Cat Barks’ by Eka Kurniawan: Time to grow up, adults

In ‘Childhood’, a semi-autobiographical account of his early life, Leo Tolstoy wrote: “What better time is there in our lives than when the two best of virtues — innocent gaiety and a boundless yearning for affection —are our sole objects of pursuit?” Reading ‘The Dog Meows, The Cat Barks’, one begins to question whether such a vision of childhood is ever universally true. Certainly not for Sato Reang, the novel’s central character, who grows up with the uneasy realisation that adults really don’t like to see kids happy.

Written by Indonesian author Eka Kurniawan and translated with remarkable clarity by Annie Tucker, the short novel offers a strikingly intimate perspective on childhood — not as remembered by an adult, but as experienced by a child. The narrative slips fluidly between first and third person, while remaining firmly anchored in Sato’s mindspace from early boyhood into adolescence.