Short story books from Indonesia
Recommended short story books (4)
Travel the world without leaving your chair.
If you are into short story here are some short story books from Indonesia for the next part of the Read Around The World Challenge.
1.
All That Is Gone by Pramoedya Ananta Toer EN
Description:
Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s transcendent novels have become part of the world literary canon, but it is his short fiction that originally made him famous. The first full-size collection of his short stories to appear in English, All That Is Gone draws from the author’s own experiences in Indonesia to depict characters trying to make sense of a war-torn culture haunted by colonialism, among them an eight-year-old girl soon to be married off by her parents for money and an idealistic young soldier who witnesses the savage beating of a man accused of being a spy. Though violence and brutality pervade... continue
2.
Apple and Knife by Intan Paramaditha EN
Description:
**A The White Review Book of the Year** A dazzling and provocative debut story collection from celebrated Indonesian writer Intan Paramaditha, putting fierce and fabulous female characters centre stage in brilliantly funny and sharp twists on fairy tale. Inspired by horror fiction, myths and fairy tales, Apple and Knife is an unsettling ride that swerves into the supernatural to explore the dangers and power of occupying a female body in today's world. These stories set in the Indonesian everyday - in corporate boardrooms, shanty towns, on dangdut stages - reveal a soupy otherworld stewing jus... continue
3.
Happy Stories, Mostly by Norman Erikson Pasaribu EN
Description:
Playful, shape-shifting and emotionally charged, Happy Stories, Mostly is a collection of twelve stories that queer the norm. Inspired by Simone Weil's concept of 'decreation', and often drawing on Batak and Christian cultural elements, these tales put queer characters in situations and plots conventionally filled by hetero characters. The stories talk to each other, echo phrases and themes, and even shards of stories within other stories, passing between airports, stacks of men's lifestyle magazines and memories of Toy Story 3, such that each one almost feels like a puzzle piece of a larger w... continue
4.
Kitchen Curse : Stories by Eka Kurniawan EN
Description:
Nominated for the Man Booker International, Eka Kurniawan brings his short stories into English for the first time Eka Kurniawan’s freewheeling imagination explores the turbulent dreams of an ex-prostitute, the hapless life of a perpetual student, victims of an anticommunist genocide, the travails of an elephant, even the vengeful fantasies of a stone. Dark, sexual, scatological, violent, and mordantly funny, these fractured fables span city and country, animal and human, myth and politics. Like nothing else, Kurniawan’s stories bury themselves in the mind. His characters and insights are at o... continue