"My Lipstick Is Red, Darling”, from Eka Kurniawan’s new collection of short stories, Kitchen Curse, begins with a woman’s arrest at a brothel. She tells the police she is merely a housewife, not a prostitute, but her husband asks for a divorce when she finally gets home. The pages that follow delve … [Read more...]
Tiffany Tsao: Giving outsiders a voice
January 26, 2020 by
Growing up, Tiffany Tsao was never in one place long enough to call it home. Her nomadic upbringing had her and her family living in the United States, Singapore and Indonesia and being an American citizen of Indonesian-Chinese descent, she not only found it difficult to establish a physical home, … [Read more...]
Latin American connection: Can Indonesian literature have the same influence?
January 26, 2020 by
Mexico was a country Dea Anugrah only knew from books. The Indonesian author explored Mexico City’s gritty streets through Roberto Bolaño’s cutting prose, which also introduced him to more than a few Mexican drug lords alongside Juan Pablo Villalobos’s character Tochtli. However, it was in August … [Read more...]
Lan Fang: A beacon in local literature
December 25, 2018 by
After Soeharto fell in 1998, there was a great opening of bottom drawers. Writers who had previously kept their manuscripts for trusted friends’ eyes only suddenly found the courage to seek a wider market. Publishers, no longer throttled by harsh censorship, responded with enthusiasm – … [Read more...]
Burning bright
February 8, 2016 by
Brash, worldly and wickedly funny, Eka Kurniawan may be South-East Asia’s most ambitious writer in a generation. [hide for="!logged"]MASSIVE, chaotic, endless and, despite it all, also charming, Jakarta can seem less a city than some sort of organic life form inexorably consuming north-western … [Read more...]