Forced into exile by the trauma of 1965, Tari Lang revisits a country she loves and its unfinished struggle for freedom in her memoir, My Neighbour, The Dictator. Tari Lang was 14 when the political turmoil of 1965 shattered her family and changed the course of her life. In My Neighbour, The … [Read more...]
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What to read this October, including a table-hopping tour of London’s most lavish restaurants
October 5, 2026 by
What happens when someone in your family commits an earth-shatteringly evil deed? That question and more are answered in Martin Chilton’s favourite new book releases for October. GK Chesterton said that when people lose their faith, they don’t believe in nothing: they believe in anything. In … [Read more...]
Growing pain
October 4, 2026 by
A memoir reveals the resilience and personal toll of surviving political persecution during Indonesia's Cold War purges. The Cold War period was one of the strangest times in human history. It stretched from late 1946 to 1991; quite a breadth of human memories in which people fought, not on … [Read more...]
Remembering is a political act
August 11, 2026 by
Back when I was a kid in the 1980s, Jakarta was a crowded city of organised chaos, somewhere between sprawling village and budding metropolis. Bicycle rickshaws operated in the shadows of nascent skyscrapers. Homes were lit by fluorescent bulbs but street vendors still hung kerosene lamps out for … [Read more...]
The ‘Sturm und Drang’ of a teenage girl and Indonesia’s transition to authoritarianism
July 24, 2026 by
Framed against the violent communist purges of 1965, Tari Lang’s debut memoir My Neighbour the Dictator weaves a gripping, Anne Frank–like coming-of-age story of a teenager thrust into Indonesia’s dangerous underground resistance. — Why are coming of age stories immensely popular? Most likely … [Read more...]
