If Australia has been blessed with excellent cartoonists, Indonesia has been similarly blessed with excellent columnists. Thanks to Jennifer Lindsay’s translations, English-speaking readers outside Indonesia can appreciate Goenawan Mohamad’s ‘Catatan Pinggir’ (Sidelines) columns from Tempo … [Read more...]

In the opening pages of Forgotten Wars, historians Christopher Bayley and Tim Harper make a claim about World War Two that could unsettle Western readers. “This was the Great Asian War,” they write, “a connected arc of conflict that claimed around 24 million lives in lands occupied by Japan, the … [Read more...]

As a Jack-of-all-literary trades—as essayist, short-story writer, translator, and poet—Sapardi Djoko Damono is best known asIndonesia’s foremost lyricist whose career meanwhile spans five decades of published work. It is the first four of these that are reflected in this collection of some 135 poems … [Read more...]

From where she was standing, on the backyard of the hospital, the only objects she could make out were the parts chosen by the dying light. Idlehorse carts, bamboo bushes deep in sleep, an abandoned pile of buckets. She walked on, into a garden that suddenly opened up, ending in a tight barricade of … [Read more...]

If you are searching for a book that is profound, original and evokes the story of Romeo and Juliet, where love is both the big question and the answer to all, pick up a copy of “Amba.” The beautifully written novel by Laksmi Pamuntjak, a poet, food critic, essayist and short story writer, will … [Read more...]