Love and loss in a hot climate. The first volume of the Indonesian writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer's epic quartet of novels set in the Dutch East Indies in the early 20th century, This Earth of Mankind, appeared in an English translation in 1982. It was followed two years later by Child of All … [Read more...]

The Lontar Foundation has for more than 25 years now endeavored to bring quality Indonesian works of literature to an international audience with their literature- in- translation project.  For the past year, one gets the feeling that Lontar is cranking up its efforts to bring even more new … [Read more...]

Intan Paramaditha's Apple and Knife, translated from Indonesian for the first time by Stephen J. Epstein, delivers a short sharp suite of tales. It would be tempting to describe the volume as feminist horror, though undercurrents of violence and misogyny, myth and madness don't stop it smouldering … [Read more...]

On the last page of Student Hidjo (Student Green, 1919) everything is in apparent stability and peace. Tata tentrem, its author, Marco Kartodikromo, would have called it in his journalistic work: Two years have passed. Green is married to Dame Violet, and he is living happily as the … [Read more...]

This new story collection by the Indonesian-born Intan Paramaditha uses horror as a vehicle for representing the experiences of women living in patriarchy and for expressing feminist anger. The results are both unsettling and intoxicating. Often revising fairytales, the stories are reminiscent of … [Read more...]