People from Bloomington are strange indeed, at least in this translated collection of stories from Indonesian writer Budi Darma. In these seven fiction stories, Darma takes a mirror to the wide open spaces of the Midwest American college town of Bloomington, Indiana, where he studied for his PhD in … [Read more...]
The Absurdist Meets Jane Austen in Bloomington
April 17, 2022 by
Budi Darma’s People from Bloomington engages in a strange realism—where life in a small-town America seems both banal and absurd. EDITOR’S NOTE: This essay originally appeared as the foreword to Budi Darma’s People from Bloomington. Ifirst read Budi Darma’s Orang-orang Bloomington (“People from … [Read more...]
Maria Antonia Rahartati: Adding color to lives of children with ‘Astérix’
April 9, 2022 by
Translator and writer Maria Antonia Rahartati Bambang Haryo received one of the most prestigious awards from the French government for introducing Astérix and friends to Indonesian children. Indonesia has tens of thousands of villages, but if children are asked about what village they are most … [Read more...]
Mirandi Riwoe inverts the world to examine the lives of outsiders
April 9, 2022 by
According to Tolstoy, there are only two possible stories: a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town. Riwoe gives us both. The Burnished Sun – its title taken from The Merchant of Venice (“Mislike me not for my complexion, / The shadow’d livery of the burnish’d sun”) – brings together the … [Read more...]
Netflix movie review: Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash – Indonesian director Edwin’s funny, profound black-comedy action drama
April 9, 2022 by
An impotent thug and a beautiful bodyguard make for an unlikely romantic pairing in Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash, a genre-bending adaptation of Eka Kurniawan’s bestselling novel of the same name from writer-director Edwin. Set in the 1980s, at the height of Indonesia’s ultra-macho … [Read more...]
