The biggest influences on my work have been Indonesian writers, like Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Asmaran S Kho Ping Hoo and Abdullah Harahap. Which authors have had the most influence on your writing? But as I wrote the book, it developed further, and it became a ghost story with a historical background. You know from the first paragraph, it is clear that it is a ghost story. How do you describe the book?Īctually, when I wrote the book, I wanted to write a ghost story.
Indonesia at Melbourne spoke to Eka before his appearance at the Melbourne Writers Festival on 28 August.īeauty is a Wound is an epic novel, spanning the dying days of Dutch colonialism, the Japanese occupation, the 1965 violence and the New Order period.
You can read an excerpt from the novel here. Incorporating elements of Indonesian folklore and magic, it is at times violent and sexually explicit, and quite often hilarious. The book follows Dewi Ayu and her four daughters, traversing Indonesia’s history from the colonial period, through the Japanese occupation, to the independence era.
Beauty Is a Wound tells the story of a prostitute, Dewi Ayu, who rises from the grave after being dead for 21 years. His 2002 novel, Cantik Itu Luka, has been superbly translated into English by Annie Tucker and was launched in Australia last week by Text Publishing. Indonesian author Eka Kurniawan has been hailed as the successor to Pramoedya Ananta Toer.
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