There is an observation in the titular story of Indonesian writer Intan Paramaditha’s first collection to be published in English, which can be read as the thematic spine of the book: ‘Sometimes it seemed like there was nothing new to talk about. It was the same old story, repeated over and over, … [Read more...]

“The tigress had come to him, lying beside him on the surau’s warm rug, while the universe outside froze. As his grandfather had said, the tigress was white as a swan or a cloud or cotton wool. How unbelievably happy he was, for the tigress was more than anything he had ever wanted”. Indonesia’s … [Read more...]

The nuanced understanding and subtlety of Paramaditha's short stories, which cleverly navigates the intersection of contemporary setting and folklore, is masterful. The first story in the collection Apple and Knife, by Indonesian-born writer Intan Paramaditha, begins with a woman recounting the … [Read more...]

By the end of the New Order in 1998, the writer Seno Gumira Ajidarma was established as a chronicler of state-based violence and urban society. His collection of stories, Saksi Mata (Eye Witness), published in 1994, was the first literary documentation of the killing and trauma inflicted on the … [Read more...]