Seven books that put you in Indonesia. Six are by writers from Indonesia and set there, starting with The Rainbow Troops and Beauty Is a Wound. The other is a wider pick, by someone who knows the place well.
Max Havelaar, published in 1860 by the Dutch official Multatuli, exposed colonial abuse in Java and remains one of the best-known books about Indonesia. Indonesian storytelling is older than print: wayang, shadow-puppet theatre in Java and Bali, performs episodes from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Indonesian is the national language, and most novelists write in it, though hundreds of languages are spoken across the archipelago. The anti-communist killings of 1965 and Suharto's rule, which ended in 1998, recur in modern fiction.
Eka Kurniawan's Beauty Is a Wound is a darkly comic saga of a Javanese coastal town from Dutch rule to the 1965 massacres. Ahmad Tohari's The Dancer centres on a ronggeng, a traditional dancer, in a poor Central Javanese village. Leila S. Chudori's Home traces political exiles in Paris and the families they left behind.
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A memoir-style novel of impoverished schoolchildren on Belitung island, showing tin-mining inequality and the power of education in 1970s Indonesia.
A sweeping, darkly comic saga of a Javanese coastal town across Dutch rule, Japanese occupation, revolution and the 1965 massacres.
Set in a poor Central Javanese village, it follows a ronggeng dancer through the turbulence leading up to the 1965 anti-communist purge.
Follows Indonesian political exiles in Paris and the families left behind, covering 1965 and the fall of Suharto in 1998.
A murder in a rural Indonesian town unravels a family's violence and folklore of the tiger spirit within everyday village life.
Spans Java, Bali and beyond from the 1960s, tracing the impact of 1965 on love, art and family through food and politics.
By long-time residents and outsiders who know the place well, or folk tales, poetry and history with a strong feel for Indonesia.
A Dutch official's fight against the abuse of Javanese villagers in Lebak, exposing colonial exploitation in the Indies.
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