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...]
Remembering the gang rapes of May 1998
June 10, 2018 by
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...]
Pramoedya Ananta Toer (Translation by Willem Samuels), ‘The Mute’s Soliloquy’
May 19, 2018 by
On the night of 13 October 1965, the Indonesian novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer was working at home; his family had already moved, for their own safety, to his mother-in-law's house. Around 10.30 pm, a crowd gathered outside and began to throw stones at the house. Police officers and soldiers … [Read more...]
All That Is Gone by Pramoedya Ananta Toer, trans Willem Samuels
May 19, 2018 by
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...]
Fireflies in Manhattan through Javanese Eyes
April 30, 2018 by
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...]
