Melipat Jarak: Sepilihan Sajak comprises Sapardi Djoko Damono’s selected poems written and published between 1998 and 2015. Quite different from Hujan Bulan Juni, his other book of selected poems released back in 2014, this one’s central theme is more of nature, God and spirituality, and old age. … [Read more...]

Redolent of the ubiquitous Indonesian kreteks, Cigarette Girl follows three generations of two Javanese families from the time of the Dutch surrender to the Japanese in 1942, via the crackdown on the communists and the massacres of 1965, to the present. Written by Ratih Kumala (whose author … [Read more...]

Among its many virtues, perhaps the most striking thing about Mochtar Lubis’ Twilight in Jakarta is that although written more than half a century ago in the 1950s, the novel illustrates that the fundamental tensions of Indonesian political life have changed little in the intervening years. A … [Read more...]

The meaning of nation is never far from Goenawan Mohamad's thoughts. It infiltrates even his most personal reflections. "Sometimes I wonder what could possibly have crossed my father's mind in the few moments before he was executed," begins one essay in this collection. "Sometimes I imagine that the … [Read more...]

Indonesia′s literary shooting star, Eka Kurniawan, recently longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, is already being hailed as Pramoedya Ananta Toer′s successor. Although ″Beauty is a wound″ was published in 2002, Kurniawan has only recently gained international recognition with its … [Read more...]