Arts

A look into Indonesian migrant women, identity, and cultural performances. 

Review: Stormy with a Chance of Fried Rice

Indonesia’s struggle to create a culture of reading

How UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage program transformed the batik neighbourhood of Laweyan

Yogyakarta’s little internet community, Taman Sari

An environmental movement is generating new forms of resistance by fusing traditional and contemporary Balinese art with social media

Poems across the Indonesian-Australian divide

Mobile libraries and writers clubs reveal a rich reading and writing culture among Indonesian migrant workers in Hong Kong

A writer pays homage to the women writers and intellectuals who paved the way for others

A new interdenominational Christian movement is gaining momentum in urban centres

Longlisted for the prestigious Man Booker International Prize Eka Kurniawan’s novel signals the birth of a sophisticated crime noir genre in Indonesian literature

Like Toer’s tetralogy before it, Semua Untuk Hindia turns Indonesia’s national history narrative on its head

Cancellations at UWRF 2015 were just the latest example of censorship in democratic Indonesia

Introduction to Man Tiger: A Novel by Eka Kurniawan

An emerging poet takes the international stage

The influence of music videos in the 2014 electoral campaign

Saskia Wieringa’s latest novel brings to life a dark period in Indonesia’s past

Indonesia, beginning of the 1980s. The young journalist Tommy comes into contact with the survivors of the genocide that the New Order regime of General Suharto carried out. To her bewilderment she hears stories about lurid dancing, castrations and the murder by young girls of a number of generals in the night of October 1 1965.  Guided by Ibu Sri, herself a former prisoner and a member of the women’s organisation that was held responsible for these alleged sexual and sadistic perversions she sets herself the task to unravel these fantasies.  Who invented these hateful lies which were meant to incite mass organizations to murder possibly one million of their neighbors?  Tommy is betrayed and thrown into prison. 

Indonesian novels about 1965 reach back to the Mahabharata to find hope and resignation 

Lontar Publishing’s John McGlynn speaks with Petia Dimitrova about the upcoming Frankfurt Book Fair 2015 at which Indonesia is the Guest of Honour nation and about the challenges of publishing Indonesian literature in translation