The Wandering is an innovative, thought-provoking twist on the Choose Your Own Adventure genre. Written in a compelling second-person narrative, it is based on the following premise: You are bored with your predictable life in Jakarta, and you wish to escape. A demon lover comes to tempt you with a … [Read more...]
‘Buru Island – A Prison Memoir’: Watermelons drained of tears
February 10, 2020 by
From above, Buru looks like a fairy tale isle washed by the Banda and Seram seas. At ground level, the third-largest island in the Maluku archipelago located 2,230 kilometers northeast of Jakarta supports the aerial image. Settlements are small, roads uncrowded, a lush landscape dominated by Mount … [Read more...]
Beauty is a Wound: Eka Kurniawan
February 5, 2020 by
“One afternoon on a weekend in March, Dewi Ayu rose from her grave after being dead for twenty-one years. … She had passed away at fifty-two, rose again after being dead for twenty-one years, and from that point forward nobody knew exactly how to calculate her age.” This novel tells the story of … [Read more...]
Magical double
January 30, 2020 by
"My Lipstick Is Red, Darling”, from Eka Kurniawan’s new collection of short stories, Kitchen Curse, begins with a woman’s arrest at a brothel. She tells the police she is merely a housewife, not a prostitute, but her husband asks for a divorce when she finally gets home. The pages that follow delve … [Read more...]
Rainbirds by Clarissa Goenawan
January 26, 2020 by
What is it about? Japanese student heads to desolate town to find out what happened to his sister after she was violently stabbed to death. OK, but what is it really about? Ren Ishida, a student from Tokyo, travels to the (fictional) town of Akakawa. It was here that his elder sister Keiko … [Read more...]
