During much of Soeharto's thirty-two years of reign as president (1967-1998) Indonesia was seen as a successful test-case in third-world development, a wayward pariah turned into a shining example of modern economic planning and democracy. His New Order government won awards from the United Nations for the country's advances in family planning. The nation's massive development plans won the applause of the World Bank and international financiers. In fact, behind the New Order's benign facade was an intricate web of nepotism, corruption and a persistent and wide-ranging repression of civil...
During much of Soeharto's thirty-two years of reign as president (1967-1998) Indonesia was seen as a successful test-case in third-world development, ...
The final days of World War II serve as the backdrop for this novel by Ismail Marahimin. Fighting has not reached the small Sumatran village of Taratakbuluh, but the quiet, tradition-bound way of life in this remote outpost on the jungles edge has nonetheless been transformed, for the Japanese have chosen it as the site of a prisoner-of-war camp for Dutch internees. "And the War is Over" is the tensely drawn story of the people of Taratakbuluh and of the Japanese soldiers, Dutch prisoners, and Javanese workers who become, briefly but significantly, a part of their lives.
The novel centers...
The final days of World War II serve as the backdrop for this novel by Ismail Marahimin. Fighting has not reached the small Sumatran village of Tarata...
"The Fall and the Heart" by S. Rukiah is one of the lesser known classics of the Indonesian revolutionary era and arguably the strongest piece of prose writing by an Indonesian woman author before the 1970s. Rukiah's account of a young, middle-class womans's experiences with her lover, her family, and the struggle for independence is deceptive in its simplicity and through "The Fall and the Heart" Rukiah presents a rare and thoughtful rendition of the idea and emotions of young people who had one foot in the revolution for its own sake and the other foot in the revolution as a reflection of...
"The Fall and the Heart" by S. Rukiah is one of the lesser known classics of the Indonesian revolutionary era and arguably the strongest piece of pros...
The stories in Family Room together make up a sojourn through time and space, with the reader traveling from Indonesian villages and remote islands to the capital city of Jakarta; and then to Victoria Park in Hong Kong and onwards to refugee camps in Kashmir, and expedition camps near the lakes of Finland. The mosaic of family rooms, filtered through the feelings and eyes of narrators with heightened subjectivities, gives one the sense of what the country of Indonesia has gone through from time to time. The further away the protagonists roam from home, the stronger is the unspoken...
The stories in Family Room together make up a sojourn through time and space, with the reader traveling from Indonesian villages and remote isl...
Doctor Sukartono, able and devoted to his work, and his wife, Tini, a beautiful and independent woman, find their marriage devoid of communication and warmth. Tini feels herself the victim of her husbands medical practice and refuses to play the role of devoted and self-sacrificing wife. Sukartono is unable to understand his wife's rebellion and, in the mists of this inner confusion, meets Rohayah, a woman who is ready to give him the security he lacks at home.
Sukartono, Tini, and Rohayah, the love triangle of this story, illustrate the confusion that was felt by the pre-war and...
Doctor Sukartono, able and devoted to his work, and his wife, Tini, a beautiful and independent woman, find their marriage devoid of communication and...
Indonesian author Julia Suryakusuma reminds us that "literature is ultimately about life," a sentiment echoed by fellow countryman Seno Gumira Ajidarma when he wrote, "While journalism speaks with facts, literature speaks with the truth." The truths found in the fourteen stories included in this collection derive from the historical, political, social, and cultural circumstances that circumscribe the lives of women in contemporary Indonesia and the ways in which they manage to find new spaces for themselves in those circumstances. While their victories are not always grand, we can hear these...
Indonesian author Julia Suryakusuma reminds us that "literature is ultimately about life," a sentiment echoed by fellow countryman Seno Gumira Ajidarm...
Sapardi Djoko Damono, one of Indonesia's most productive and popular poets first began writing poetry as a high school student in the mid- 1950s. Before Dawn includes poems written by the author over a forty year time span, from 1961 to 2001. Arranged as they are in chronological order, the poems in Before Dawn together form a kind of poetic autobiography.
In "One Night," written in 1964, the author is a young Muslim boy crying outside the church door as his classmates celebrate Christmas. In the 1967 poem, "For my Wife," he is a young husband telling his wife that "the earth holds a...
Sapardi Djoko Damono, one of Indonesia's most productive and popular poets first began writing poetry as a high school student in the mid- 1950s. Befo...
Born in Ngawi, East Java, in 1932, Umar Kayam obtained his masters degree from New York University and his doctoral degree from Cornell University. It was there, in New York, where he began to hone his literary skills. The publication of his first collection of short stories, A Thousand Fireflies in Manhattan, in 1972, gained him national fame as a short story writer.
The light and semi-ironic tone of Kayam's "New York stories," in which the author viewed an archetypal cast of New York characters through the lens of a nai ve Indonesian outsider vanished completely in the next phase of the...
Born in Ngawi, East Java, in 1932, Umar Kayam obtained his masters degree from New York University and his doctoral degree from Cornell University. It...
"An ambitious saga that intertwines narration from various generations and creates a wide-ranging picture of Indonesia." -- Publishers Weekly
**Nominated for the FT/Oppenheimer Funds Emerging Voices Award 2016**
"An epic saga of families and friends entangled in the cruel snare of history" (Time Magazine) Home examines the tragedy of political exiles during Suharto's regime (1965-1998) forced out of Indonesia after the 1965 massacre of presumed leftists and sympathizers, alternating between Paris and Jakarta, delving into the lives of the...
"An ambitious saga that intertwines narration from various generations and creates a wide-ranging picture of Indonesia." -- Publishers Weekly...
