Fiction & Essays

Book extract: Sarongge

Lontar Modern Indonesia: ‘But that is, after all, the relationship between land and power... Whoever holds power will impose their view.’

Petikan buku: Sarongge

Lontar Modern Indonesia: ‘Siapa yang pegang kuasa, akan paksakan pandangannya tentang bagaimana cara mengatur aset alam itu.’

A drink for humanity

Honouring Indonesian activist Putu Oka Sukanta for humanity

Essay: ‘Harvard’ and ‘Cambridge’ at your doorstep

Pare’s English language school grew out of a tutoring job and is now attracting thousands

Kartini: Kumpulan puisi

Kumpulan karya puisi memperingati jasa-jasa Kartini dalam perjuangan kaum wanita Indonesia.

Kartini: Anthology of poems

Five poems celebrating Kartini and her contribution to Indonesia's feminist movement.

Esai: Mencari identitas, memetik I.N.D.O.N.E.S.I.A

Essay: Redefining Indonesia

Almost twenty years after reformasi, journalist and novelist Leila S. Chudori ponders on the successes and failures of this historic period for Indonesia

In Memoriam & Ten weeks in Bali, Java, Singapore and Sumatra, December 1981 - March 1982

Many older readers of Inside Indonesia will remember John Barnard, who died earlier this year in Melbourne after a brief illness. John, who worked as a technician in the science laboratory at Monash University, was a regular attendee at the regular Centre for Southeast Asian Studies seminars where he loved to meet up with old friends and make new ones. A shy retiring person and a bachelor all his life, visiting Indonesia was always a significant annual event for him as his travel diary clearly shows.

Review: Witnesses to Holland's war in Indonesia 1945-49

A perfect lunch break

Pat Walsh's book of short stories and poems takes us through a year of intimate encounters with Jakarta

They say I'm not a Muslim

Lontar Modern Indonesian Fiction Series

The Earth Dance

Lontar Modern Indonesia Fiction Series

If I were Australia/ Kalau aku Australia

Poems across the Indonesian-Australian divide

A room of one’s own

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

A feminist trajectory of literary influences

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

Review: Man Tiger strikes!

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

Introduction to Man Tiger: A Novel by Eka Kurniawan

I am Suciwati

A monologue

The Crocodile Hole

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.

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Lontar Modern Indonesia

A selection of stories from the Indonesian classics and modern writers, periodically published free for Inside Indonesia readers, courtesy of Lontar

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