Around the time half a million ­Indonesian Muslims packed Jakarta’s national monument park in late 2016 to pray for the blasphemy conviction of the city’s Christian governor, Feby Indirani decided to test reaction to her new collection of religious parodies by publishing one online. It’s fair to … [Read more...]

For this audacious author, fiction gives her room to tell more sensitive stories. Mary is pregnant without ever having intercourse with a man. Without being married. Such a miracle happened when Jesus was born fatherless. Nowadays, who would believe that Mary was impregnated without having … [Read more...]

“Try to count them, I dare you,” Tempo veteran journalist and author Leila S. Chudori responded in protest over an assertion that fictional stories on the 1965 coup and subsequent killings of members and sympathisers of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) were trending. “People said there were … [Read more...]

The New Zealand Festival's Reader and Writer's section is a chance to see some of your favourite authors and find many new ones. A very new author - at least to English language fiction is Indonesian writer Intan Paramaditha. Intan is a media and film lecturer at Sydney's Macquarie University … [Read more...]

Mars Noersmono might have a lean physique, grey hair and slightly trembling hands, but the 78-year-old remains strong, despite the soft tone of his speech suggesting otherwise. “Sorry, I can’t speak at length without breathing properly,” he said during a discussion of his book Bertahan Hidup di … [Read more...]