I laughed when I reached the pages on Franz Magnis-Suseno. Then the laugh died in my throat. There is something frightening beneath the comedy. Here is the story. In Makassar, in August 2019 police and vigilantes in religious dress seized two books by Magnis-Suseno, Pemikiran Karl Marx (Karl … [Read more...]
Remembering is a political act
August 11, 2026 by
Back when I was a kid in the 1980s, Jakarta was a crowded city of organised chaos, somewhere between sprawling village and budding metropolis. Bicycle rickshaws operated in the shadows of nascent skyscrapers. Homes were lit by fluorescent bulbs but street vendors still hung kerosene lamps out for … [Read more...]
A Jakarta childhood ends: Tari Lang bears witness to Indonesia’s 1965 bloodbath
July 24, 2026 by
There are historical crimes much of the world has agreed to half-remember. Indonesia’s anti-communist massacres of 1965–66, when the Indonesian military and its civilian collaborators murdered somewhere between 500,000 and a million people—trade unionists, peasant organizers, ethnic Chinese, … [Read more...]
The ‘Sturm und Drang’ of a teenage girl and Indonesia’s transition to authoritarianism
July 24, 2026 by
Framed against the violent communist purges of 1965, Tari Lang’s debut memoir My Neighbour the Dictator weaves a gripping, Anne Frank–like coming-of-age story of a teenager thrust into Indonesia’s dangerous underground resistance. — Why are coming of age stories immensely popular? Most likely … [Read more...]
