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  Laksmi Pamuntjak
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  Laksmi Pamuntjak

  Born
  Jakarta, Indonesia
  Nationality
  Indonesian
  Known for
  Poet, writer
  Laksmi Pamuntjak (22 December 1971) is an Indonesian poet, essayist, and award-winning novelist and food writer. She writes for numerous novels as well as local and international publications including opinion articles for the Guardian.[1]

  Contents [hide]
  1
  Life
  2
  Bibliography
  3
  External links
  4
  References

  Life[edit]
  Born in Jakarta, Laksmi was a Minangkabau descent from Sungai Puar, West Sumatra. Her grand father Kasoema Sutan Pamuntjak was an editor of Balai Pustaka and founder of CV Djambatan, a publishing company.[2] Laksmi who writes in Indonesian and English, is the author of two collections of poetry; a collection of poetry and prose; a treatise on the relationship between man and violence based on the Iliad; a collection of short stories based on paintings; four editions of the award-winning The Jakarta Good Food Guide;[3] two translations of the works of leading Indonesian poet and essayist Goenawan Mohamad, and two best-selling novels.
  Laksmi’s first novel Amba,[4] a national bestseller, was the winner of the Literaturpreis 2016.[5] It is the only German literary prize awarded to women authors from Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Arab World. The novel is a modern take on The Mahabharata,[6] set against the backdrop of the Indonesian mass killings of 1965 and the Buru penal colony. The novel has been translated into English, German and Dutch. The US edition of the English translation, The Question of Red,[7] was published in July 2016. The English translation of her second novel, Aruna dan Lidahnya,[8] is due for publication in the US in early 2017. A movie adaptation based on the book is announced to star Indonesian actress Dian Sastrowardoyo[9].
  In August 2015, the German translation of Amba, Alle Farben Rot,[10] was Number 1 on the Weltempfaenger[11] list for the best international work of fiction translated into German. It has also appeared on the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung's[12] list of 8 Most Important Novels of the Frankfurt Book Fair 2015, De Bild's[13] Top 10 Books of the Frankfurt Book Fair 2015, and the ORF Kultur (Austria)'s[14] Top 10 List for November 2015.
  In 2012, Laksmi, who is co-founder of the bilingual Aksara Bookstore, was selected as the Indonesian representative at the Poetry Parnassus/Cultural Olympics,[15] the largest poetry festival in the UK,[citation needed] held in conjunction with the London Olympics. Her prose and poetry have been published in many international journals, including the preface to Not a Muse: A World Poetry Anthology[16] (2008).
  Between 2009 and 2011, Laksmi was jury member of the Prince Claus Awards[17] based in Amsterdam. She has one daughter, Nadia Larasati, aged 21. Pamuntjak is single and currently divides her time between Berlin and Jakarta.
  In 2016, Laksmi received LiBeraturpreis, a German literary award sponsored by the Frankfurt Book Fair, for her novel Amba[18].

• Latitudes - https://latitudes.nu/interview-with-writer-laksmi-pamuntjak/

  Q & A with writer Laksmi Pamuntjak
  april 25, 2017
  by latadmin
  Human interest, Travel0
  1

  by Kurt G. Huehn/images by Kurt G. Huehn, Jacky Suharto and Nicky Gunawan

  Photo by Kurt G. Huehn
  1. Your book and its topic attracted wide international interest this autumn. Was that a surprise for you? After all, the background of your novel is the Indonesia of the year 1965 with its massacres of more than 500 000 communists and detentions of their supporters and those who were suspected to be one of them.
  Yes, in fact it was rather a surprise to me, especially the reception in Germany. Not only did the novel garner a great deal of media coverage, but it also made Number One on the Weltempfaenger (Receivers of the World) List of the best works of fiction from outside Germany; the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ)’s List of the Top 8 Most Important Novels of the Frankfurt Book Fair; De Bild’s List of 10 Best Books of The Frankfurt Book Fair, and the ORF Kultur’s List of Top 10 Books in November.

  Photo by Jacky Suharto
  Most important for me, however, was the very warm and enthusiastic German audience. Not only are they among the most cultured and sophisticated readers – and generous too – but everywhere I went to on my German book tour – be it Berlin, Hamburg, Duesseldorf, Goettingen, Bielefeld, Bonn, Erfurt, Heidelberg, Frankfurt, Bad Berleburg – I encountered nothing but genuine empathy and solidarity for Indonesians’ collective struggle to come to terms with our violent past as well as to render tangible justice for an untold many. It is as if two nations with little shared history need only to be enjoined by the experience of national trauma to be emotionally and spiritually at one.

  Dutch version of the novel
  2. The brilliant narrative story in the style of the philosophical epic of Mahabharata could suggest that the central theme of the novel between two individuals takes place in front of the conflict of two almost equipollent powers.
  Ever since I was a child, I was exposed to wayang, the great Javanese shadow puppet tradition, and its live variety, the wayang orang. As I was growing up, my mother took me to wayang orang performances, and so I was naturally exposed to the great myths like the Mahabaratha. I am also, by nature, drawn to stories that somehow fall through the cracks, lesser known works, from not the big stories everyone knows.
  The Amba and Bhisma story is quite significant in the Indonesian version of the Mahabharata but it isn’t like, well-known. And to me there is something so very sad about the idea of a fallen woman, and in this case Amba is like the definitive fallen woman—and one who is twice scorned at that!

  Photo by Jacky Suharto
  I guess I am always drawn to the interior of such difficult, unfortunate, marginalized or cast-off characters. I wanted to rewrite the Amba story by turning her into a spunky woman, someone who dares write her own story, subvert her own naming by living life by her own lights. In the same vein I want to imagine a Bhisma who is less heroic than the epic would have us see him, and a Salwa who is more noble than what the epic gave him credit for.
  I suppose this leads, then, to why I have chosen to use mythology as a framework for my novel. I have always been drawn to mythology. Since I started writing poetry, I’ve worked a lot with references to mythology. I also wrote a mild philosophical intervention into the works of two women philosophers – Simone Weil and Rachel Bespaloff. They both wrote on the eve of the Second World War trying to explain why violence is so pervasive in mankind. Both women went back to the Iliad to explain these patterns of violence. This is very striking to me.
  In the great myths everything is about doubts and ambiguities and inconsistencies, about characters who you know are flawed you can almost write their lines for them, about characters who have both man and woman in them, about characters who are never ‘just good’ or ‘just evil.’ So mythology has helped me sharpen my awareness of the grey zones of people’s lives, which leads me to a novel about a war within a family, about brothers who kill each other, without passing judgment on either side. I also find that transposing the myth onto an ‘imagined’ real life, as it were, provides much of the emotional arc of the story.
  Having said that, the part about not passing judgment, I don’t mean that I am denying that a systematic, politically-charged pogrom of members of the Communist party and its affiliated organizations and sympathizers did take place. It is not to deny that up to 1 million Indonesians have been killed, and that the Suharto regime should be held responsible for what was perhaps one of the bloodiest Communist purges in the 20th century.

  Photo by Nicky Gunawan
  But often the effectiveness of a political project such as the Suharto regime relies on the way it feeds into human nature. Milan Kundera reminds us in The Art of the Novel that “Man desires a world where good and evil can be clearly distinguished, for he has an innate and irrepressible desire to judge before he understands. Religions and ideologies are founded on this desire.”
  As I mentioned before, what is fantastic about The Mahabharata is that it accommodates all the grey zones; it doesn’t render the world in “black” and “white.” It provides opportunities for the writer to “body- forth” characters and give them an interior. And only when we accept ambiguity as the human condition are we more open to stories of ordinary people. Like other epics such as the Iliad, stories in the Mahabharata also highlight the ways in which human beings often attain their highest lucidity at the point of destruction. My ex-political prisoner friends told me of some extraordinary instances of empathy and compassion, of genuine friendship and forgiveness between the oppressor and the oppressed.
  3. There’s currently an increasing discussion going on in Indonesia whether the situation in 1965 resulted from a ‘horizontal’ conflict of two controversial political groups of opponents or a ‘vertical’ conflict between global powers and the Indonesian people. How do you experience this discussion?
  We know that no great historical struggle ever occurs in a vacuum, and that the seeds of discontent between the Left and the Right in Indonesia had been sown for decades prior to the tragedy. Prior to ‘1965,’ the Left, buttressed by the ascendancy of the Indonesian Communist Party, were persecuting the Right too. Land reform had been for a long time a major issue between Communists and Muslims, allied to the army. So if ‘1965’ has remained a divisive and polarizing issue for many Indonesians, and if many Indonesians at the time felt it really was a moment of national crisis in which the only option was to kill or to be killed, this is quite understandable.
  And yet, as I said earlier, there is no denying that the genocide took place, and that the Suharto regime was responsible for it.
  Anyway. When I set off writing my novel, I was less interested in the question of who the masterminds of the 30 September movement were or in condemning those responsible for the mass killings of 1965-66 as it was to make sense of my country’s history as seen through the memories of ordinary people, people who tend to be excluded from the “panoptic” view of history. And this includes those often ambiguous or conflicted about their political positions, as much as about those who had clear and categorical views on where they were on the political or ideological divide. Why? Because life is neither black nor white, “here” or “there.”
  I wanted to make sense of how a tragedy of such scale and complexity did to people, how it affected their lives whether they were card-carrying Communists, mere sympathizers, those without any clear ideological or political stances, or those who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, how they learned to live with defeat, incomprehension, loss, the need to resort to silence, and how, if anything, silence had changed them. Were friendships possible between the oppressor and the oppressed, was forgiveness possible?

  Photo by Jacky Suharto
  Another reason for writing this novel is because I went through school, in the 70s, with a very one-sided version of history and I recall being very disturbed by that. We were taught categorically—with no room for other interpretations—that all Communists were atheists and the enemy of the Indonesian state, that the Indonesian Communist Party was responsible for the killings of the generals on 1 October 1965, and that all communists were evil. What further disturbs me is that not only have we become so schooled in silence or “forgetting”, but also that new generations are wholly ignorant of that period of history. A survey published by the Jakarta Globe in 2009 showed that more than half of the respondents comprising university students in Jakarta had never even heard of the mass killings of 1965-1966. For me this is such a sad thing.
  4. Do you think Western societies still need a greater awareness of their former political involvement in the tragic events in Indonesia in1965?
  The world is so much more connected now, and truths are much easier to come by when you know where to look.
  5. Is the Indonesian audience more open to look at these tragic events of their history rather in the form of a novel or would a historical recount have the same effect? Is there a wider acceptance of a novel?
  I think it’s inevitable that we all try to do our own thing based on our professions. I never think writers of fiction necessarily have an edge over historians, or journalists, who each do their own thing in recounting or recording history within what is possible in their disciplines. And that all such efforts should take place simultaneously is even better, for each complements the other.
  All I know is that when I set off to write my novel, I didn’t do so in order to “amend history,” because it isn’t the role of the novel to do so. Novels are written not to judge or punish. What they do, and often do well, is to tell stories anew. There is this beautiful quote by Novalis, “Novels arise from the shortcomings of history.”
  6. What could be the reason that especially female authors take up this sensitive subject in their oeuvre? Are they more courageous?

  I think it’s purely an accident of history. Women are not more courageous than men, but they have had to face more challenges on many more levels of life in a patriarchal society, so perhaps they feel that once freedom is given them, they have nothing to lose – and their perspective is broader.
  And, in Indonesia, you will be surprised that women are always so PRESENT in public life. Whether as the motor, the thinker, the conceptor, the people behind the scenes, they are to be found in almost every cause and grievance undertaken by civil society: whether it be corruption, inter-ethnic violence, religious intolerance, the unsolved murder of certain activists, the death penalty, discrimination against women, abuse of power, you name it.

  7. Would you dare to predict or comment on the future handling of freedom of speech in Indonesia after the ban of all 1965 related subjects during the Ubud writers and readers festival?
  First of all, let me say this: It’s a shame that the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival (UWRF) did not defend its freedom of programming. They should have, because standing their ground would have meant fighting to preserve the democratic space opened up since the fall of the Suharto regime. We all need to resist and speak out against efforts to suppress freedom of expression in Indonesia, especially as social media and growing transnational activism on ‘1965’ have made it impossible for the current regime to bury the issue as the Suharto regime did.
  As for my prediction: hard to say. The main problem with Indonesia is whenever you think one thing, something happens which offsets your earlier reading of the situation. Until last month — until the 50th anniversary of the Indonesian 1965 genocide, that is – my essential reading of where we were at in our struggle against forgetting was a positive and hopeful one, despite President Joko Widodo’s refusal to apologise to 1965 victims, which was somehow expected.
  I was very much hopeful of the work of the International People’s Tribunal of 1965 Crimes Against Humanity taking place soon in The Hague between 10 and 13 November, even if they will be limited in their scope, lacking the legal punitive power to drag alleged perpetrators to court and charge them accordingly but armed instead with the moral power to come up with findings that would constitute the basis for future policy making on 1965. I was very much hopeful even if we knew they would not solve much, or come up with all the answers they are seeking, given the opposition they are facing from factions within and outside the government with prevailing links to the Suharto regime; I was very much hopeful even if I knew that the real work of truth and reconciliation still falls on the shoulder of civil society: those tasks of producing and disseminating a revisionist history at school, of finding tangible ways of compensating victims and families of victims, of empowering victims to speak out, of revealing abuses by setting up truth seeking commissions…
  Up until a month ago, I was always proud of the gains we have made in the past 17 years since the fall of Suharto. I was proud of the measure we have enjoyed of hard-earned freedom from fear, censorship, and from restrictions to creativity. I was proud of the consistent quest for alternative readings and histories, not just about 1965, but also other dark periods of our history, bringing with them new ways of seeing and thinking about the world. I was proud of the fact that the infrastructure of freedom so long devalued – bookstores, publishing houses, the press – had the courage to stand up for themselves and give people their voices back.
  Up until a month ago, I still tended to look on the 17 years of political and cultural renaissance as a triumph of the collective memory. Or, rather, the failure of Fascism’s central conceit: that domination does not breed resistance to itself.
  However, if in the past month I was tentative in my public discussion of the festival censorship – stopping short, in other words, of saying that there is a rise of neo-anti-Communism in Indonesia – it has become harder to do so now. Similar incidents that have occurred within a few days of each other are equally disheartening and smack too much of the old tropes of official neurosis: taken together, they suggest an eerie revival of the Suharto era.
  Take the case of Tom Iljas, a 77-year-old former political exile in Sweden. He was arbitrarily arrested and deported earlier this month for visiting a mass grave of 1965 victims in West Sumatra, in search of the final resting place of his father.
  The irony of having been barred from coming home 50 years ago, only to be banished once more in so-called peaceful times, tests the limits of humiliation. In a statement, Iljas and his supporters said: “[J]ust to look at the mass graves of family members we still get terror and intimidation … We recognise that what is happening is the result of efforts for reconciliation and the fulfilment of the rights of victims.”
  Even by the standards of post-totalitarian nations, with their lingering paranoia and tendency to be consecrated to the memory of official ideology and legitimacy of power, this incident was quite stunning in its audacity. It was utterly lacking in substance – legal, moral or otherwise.
  The other case, no less Suharto-esque, concerns the confiscation and burning of the Satya Wacana University student magazine Lentera’s special 10 October edition, which explored the 1965 purges in Salatiga.
  This incident reminded me of the second half of the 80s and the first half of the 90s, when you couldn’t count the number of student arrests for producing and distributing “subversive” material. The normalisation of campus life (Normalisasi Kehidupan Kampus) decree of April 1978 and coordinating body for student affairs (Badan Koordinasi Kampus) formed the NKK/BKK policy that forced Indonesia’s system of higher education to its knees. That acronym became shorthand for the death of universities and the death of thinking in Suharto’s Indonesia.
  Indeed, there appeared a darker, older supervising power that has kept this trend towards growing state intimidation and censorship under surveillance all along, and the realisation that this was the case hit me quite hard.
  However, to say Communism is an empty threat, given Suharto made sure that nothing was left of Communism in Indonesia, is of course to miss the point. Anti-Communist propaganda has worked before as a legitimising basis of power and control, and a variation on it will work again, given how deeply conditioned a large majority of Indonesians still are by the old regime’s official history.
  What we are witnessing is not the rise of neo-anti-Communism per se, even if it seems that way on the surface; instead, anti-Communism is merely a pretext for state terrorism and heightened control in the larger, and a more concerning scheme of a re-militarisation of government, or an increasing move towards a ‘police state.’
  To many seasoned analysts of Indonesian politics, this volte-face might come as no surprise. Yet the hard-earnedness of reformasi – the period of democratic transition that followed Suharto’s reign – may have imprinted a certain intractability upon those who had fought for it, if not a downright refusal to accept the possibility of a regression of any kind.
  Still. There is no denying the telltale signs. The return to anti-Communism rhetoric as a pretext for state intimidation. The return to the culture of fear when there is nothing to fear of except for the healthy probings of historical inquiry that are essential to a nation’s healing.
  But this does not mean we should lose hope. We have always known how to fight back.

  8. Germany bears the historical responsibility for the murder of 6 Mio Jews. Could Indonesia be encouraged to learn from to the official German handling of this dark chapter of their past?
  Oh, yes. I think the German collective guilt has made them not just more sensitive to human suffering and the idea of justice, as they have shown in their generosity in the current refugee situation. Of course, there are always exceptions, such as the PEGIDA, but the point is the nation bears historical responsibility over the extermination of 6 million Jews during the Second World War. You could see this attitude in the sheer public outrage over writer Akif Pirrinci’s scandalous and unconscionable statement regarding the concentration camps at a recent PEGIDA rally in Dresden.
  9. Have the reactions of the Indonesian readers of your book Amba – The Question of Red had any influence on your everyday life and your perception of Indonesia?
  Yes, for the most part it has reaffirmed my faith in the spirit, resilience and openness of the Indonesian people. And the fact that the people have been buying my novel are mostly young people, university students, has made me even more hopeful. I think in its own small way it has. The fact is that it’s selling well, and of my readers who have written me or approached me regarding the novel, they are mostly young people, university students…
  As to whether the novel has changed their thinking, I really can’t judge. I think literature doesn’t change the world. But it does have the capacity to change people, and if I have reached one, two, five people, nothing will make me happier.

• Writers Unlimited - https://www.writersunlimited.nl/en/participant/laksmi-pamuntjak

  (Indonesia, 1971) had her debut novel Amba published in 2012 in Indonesia. It has already been published in English, German and Dutch. The novel is a modern take on the story of Amba and Bhisma in the Mahabharata, set against the context of one of the 20th century's bloodiest Communist purges and the Buru penal colony in the Moluccas. In November 2014, Pamuntjak released her second novel, Aruna dan Lidahnya. By mid December, it had become a national bestseller and is now already in its 2nd edition. Pamuntjak, one of the few Indonesian writers to publish in English, made her breakthrough internationally in 2005 with her first volume of poetry, Ellipsis, proclaimed by the Herald UK as one of the best books of the year. Her latest volume, The Anagram, appeared in 2007. In addition to poetry Pamuntjak writes short stories. Recurring themes in her often sensual work are identity and tolerance, food as metaphor for culture, complex love relationships and the relationship between mother and daughter. Pamuntjak has also published articles on art, literature, classical music, politics, film and food in the weekly Tempo and The Jakarta Post, among others. Early 2008 she launched the gastronomical guide Jakarta Good Food Guide 2008-2009, which was well-received.

• Jakarta Post - http://www.thejakartapost.com/life/2018/05/14/laksmi-pamuntjaks-passion-for-all-things-culinary.html

  Laksmi Pamuntjak's passion for all things culinary

  Katrin Figge
  The Jakarta Post
  Berlin | Mon, May 14, 2018 | 08:38 am

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  Laksmi Pamuntjak (laksmipamuntjak.com/-)
  Although not obvious at first, the kitchen and how we approach cooking, recipes and ingredients are a perfect metaphor for life.
  In her latest book, critically acclaimed Indonesian novelist, poet, journalist and food writer Laksmi Pamuntjak paints a colorful picture of the relationship between friendship, self-discovery and mouthwatering delicacies.
  The Birdwoman’s Palate, the English translation to Laksmi’s novel Aruna & Lidahnya ( 2014 ), was published in January this year.
  The book follows protagonist Aruna, an epidemiologist dedicated to food and avian politics, on her journey across Indonesia to research bird flu cases where she discovers the country’s culinary treasures together with two friends and a coworker.
  It was also recently announced that Palavi Films has acquired the rights to adapt the novel for the silver screen. Directed by Edwin with a screenplay by Titien Wattimena, the movie is scheduled for release in late September and will star Dian Sastrowardoyo as Aruna.
  Read also: Dian Sastrowardoyo to star in Laksmi Pamuntjak’s book-to-movie adaptation
  Laksmi talked about her lifelong love affair with food during the recent event “Temu Sastra” at the Rumah Budaya Indonesia in Berlin.
  “I come from a family that is very passionate about food,” she recalled. “We had a cook who created the most wonderful dishes for us at home, so I was lucky enough to grow up surrounded by good food. We also had a tradition as a family to go out and try new restaurants together.”
  Whenever she travels abroad, Laksmi likes to keep this tradition alive by visiting different restaurants.
  She quickly realized that, compared to many other cuisines, preparing Indonesian dishes is rather labor-intensive, as they require a large variety of spices and condiments – which is arguably the main reason behind the archipelago’s flavorful and rich culinary scene.
  With The Jakarta Good Food Guide, she elevated the art of food writing in Indonesia to a new level. A guide to more than 500 restaurants, cafes and street vendors scattered throughout the capital, the series – published between 2001 and 2010 – not only includes insightful reviews but also personal observations and essays on culinary traditions and heritage.
  In The Birdwoman’s Palate, Laksmi shows the process of cooking can mean so much more than just preparing a meal – it can be about coming out of one’s shell, to be more open for new things and to expand one’s horizon. Talking about cooking can become a metaphor for love, hatred and revenge, but also sociology, politics and religion.
  Food plays a vital role in everyone’s life – sometimes even more than we realize, because it is something we take for granted.
  Sharing a personal story, Laksmi remembered her late husband, who passed away from cancer at the age of 44. During his last weeks, she said, he was on a drip, unable to ingest solid food, yet he continuously watched food channels on TV.
  “I thought it was too much to bear to see all this food when he couldn’t even taste it himself anymore, but then I realized that many of our best life memories are related to food,” she said. “He talked a lot about the restaurants we had gone to together, the dishes we had eaten.”
  Read also: Laksmi Pamuntjak wins international award for female authors
  After the international success of her debut novel The Question of Red (Amba in Indonesian) – a sweeping love story during the political turmoil in Indonesia in the 1960s – it may seem at first glance that Laksmi is turning away from political issues with The Birdwoman’s Palate, but instead, she said it was a natural development, given her background in food writing.
  In any case, Laksmi added, her approach to writing a novel remained the same.
  “When you are writing, you have to be willing to do thorough research, expand your knowledge and most of all, be passionate, regardless of the topic,” she said. “And even though The Birdwoman’s Palate mainly revolves around food, it also touches on more serious issues, like corruption and bird flu.”
  The evening with Laksmi, whose sequel to The Question of Red will be published in August, was the first in the new event series called “Temu Sastra” (Literary Encounter), which, according to Ahmad Saufi, cultural attaché of the Indonesian Embassy in Berlin, is dedicated to Indonesian literature and its main protagonists, including authors and translators.
  The event encourages the audience to discover Indonesian literature through discussions with the authors, readings as well as Q&A sessions.
  “Indonesian literature experienced a global boost since Indonesia was the Guest of Honour country at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2015,” he said. “To accommodate the growing interest in Indonesian literature, we decided to establish this new forum.”

• Asia Literary Review - http://www.asialiteraryreview.com/users/laksmi-pamuntjak

  Laksmi Pamuntjak
  LAKSMI PAMUNTJAK is an Indonesian poet, essayist, journalist, short-story writer, food critic and novelist.
  Her first novel, Amba, translated into English as The Question of Red, is about the historical memory of 1965, in which up to one million accused Communists in Indonesia were massacred by the Suharto government.
  The German and Dutch translations of the novel were published in September 2015 under the title Alle Farben Rot (Ullstein Verlag) and Amba of De Kleur Van Rood (Xander Uitgevers). In August 2015, Alle Farben Rot made it to number one on the prestigious Weltempfaenger list of best works of fiction translated into German from countries outside Germany.
  Pamuntjak's second novel, Aruna dan Lidahnya, tells of Indonesia’s culinary diversity and the corrupt politics of avian flu. Both novels are national bestsellers in Indonesia.
  In 2012 Pamuntjak, who was also co-founder of Aksara Bookstore, was selected as the Indonesian representative at the Poetry Parnassus/Cultural Olympics in London, the largest poetry festival in the history of the UK, held in conjunction with the London Olympics. She now writes op-eds for The Guardian and divides her time between London, Berlin and Jakarta.

  The English translation of the Prologue to Aruna and her Palate will be published in Issue 29 of the Asia Literary Review.

• London Guardian - https://www.theguardian.com/profile/laksmi-pamuntjak

  Laksmi Pamuntjak is the author of three collections of poetry, a treatise on the relationship between man and violence based on the Iliad, a collection of short stories, four editions of the best-selling and award-winning Jakarta Good Food Guide and two novels. Pamuntjak's first novel Amba: The Question of Red, which has been translated into several languages, is about the historical violence in 1965, in which up to one million accused Communists in Indonesia were massacred. In October 2016, it won the LiBeraturpreis in Germany. Her second novel Aruna dan Lidahnya, which will be published in English in the US in 2017, deals with Indonesia's culinary diversity and the corrupt politics of avian flu. Both novels are national bestsellers. In 2012 Pamuntjak, who is also cofounder of Aksara Bookstore in Jakarta, was selected as the Indonesian representative at the Poetry Parnassus/Cultural Olympiad in London, held in conjunction with the London Olympics.

• Laksmi Pamuntjak Website - http://laksmipamuntjak.com/

  Laksmi Pamuntjak (b. 1971) is a bilingual Indonesian novelist, poet, food writer and journalist. She works as an art and food consultant and writes for numerous local and international publications including opinion articles for the Guardian.
  She is the author of two collections of poetry (one of which, Ellipsis, appeared in the 2005 Herald UK Books of the Year pages), a treatise on the relationship between man and violence based on the Iliad; a collection of short stories based on paintings; five editions of the best-selling and award-winning Jakarta Good Food Guide; two translations of the works of Indonesian poet and essayist Goenawan Mohamad; and two best-selling novels.
  Amba/The Question of Red, Pamuntjak’s bestselling first novel, won Germany’s LiBeraturpreis this year, was short-listed for the 2012 Khatulistiwa Literary Award,appeared on the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’s Top 8 list of the best books of the Frankfurt Book Fair 2015, and was named best work of fiction from Asia, America, Latin America, and the Caribbean translated into German on the Weltempfaenger (Receivers of the World) list of the best works of fiction translated into German. The novel is a modern take on the Hindu epic Mahabharata set against the backdrop of the Indonesian mass killings of 1965 and the Buru penal colony, and has been translated into English, German (Alle Farben Rot, 2015) and Dutch (Amba of De Kleur Van Rood, 2015). It also appeared in De Bild's Top 10 Books of the Frankfurt Book Fair 2015, and the ORF Kultur Top 10 List for November 2015.
  In 2012, Pamuntjak, who is co-founder of Aksara Bookstore, was selected as the Indonesian representative for Poetry Parnassus at the 2012 London Olympics. Her prose and poetry have been published in many international literary journals. She currently divides her time between Berlin and Jakarta.

  Pamuntjak has been invited to numerous literary readings and discussions, among others in New York, Berlin, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Leipzig, Florence, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Sydney and Amsterdam, and international literary festivals such as Macedonia (Struga Poetry Evenings Festival), Torshavn, Faroe Islands (Tower at the End of the World Festival), Australia (eg. Byron Bay Literary Festival; National Poetry Festival in Victoria), Canada (Wordfest Literary Festival in Calgary and Banff), The Netherlands (The Hague: Winternachten International Literary Festival, Amsterdam: “Read My World” International Literary Festival), Germany (Berlin, Bonn, Hamburg Harbour Front, Goettingen), Hong Kong (Man Booker International Literary Festival), Singapore, India (Times Literary Festival, Bangalore; Academy, Delhi); Bangladesh (Hay Literary Festival Dhaka); Indonesia (Ubud International Writers and Readers Festival); and Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur; Georgetown Literary Festival Penang)
  Her recent 2015 German book tour has seen her give talks and readings, among others, in Berlin, Bonn, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Goettingen, Dusseldorf, Heidelberg, Frankfurt, Erfurt, Bielefeld, and Bad Berleburg.
  Pamuntjak has been invited to speak as guest writer at University of Oxford, Yale University, New York University (NYU), School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (SOAS), and Ecole francaise d’Extreme- Orient in Paris.
  Pamuntjak’s poetry and short fiction have appeared, among others, in Critical Muslim (Summer 2015); Asymptote (January 2015); BooksActually Gold Standard Anthology 2016; Softblow; Takahe (NZ): QLRS (Vol. 11 no. 1, Jan 2012), Heat Literary Journal (Australia), Asia Literary Review (December 2015; Autumn 2006, Vol. 3; Spring 2007, Vol. 4; Autumn 2007, Vol. 5; Prince Claus Fund Journal (Special Edition, #12, 2006); the Anthology of Writings from the Utan Kayu Biennale Literary Festival 2007, Not a Muse world poetry anthology (Haven Books: Hong Kong, 2009); Scalar Literary Magazine (Premier Edition, April 2010); Biblio Review of Books (2007); and the Poetry Edition of the Asia Literary Review (November 2010). She also wrote the preface to Not a Muse: World Poetry Anthology (Haven Books: Hong Kong, 2009). In 2012, her poem “A Traveler’s Tale” was published in The World Record (edited by Neil Astley and Anna Selby, Bloodaxe Books: London, 2012) and included in the Rain of Poems (Casagrande: London, 2013).
  In April 2009, Pamuntjak was appointed member of the international prize jury of the art philantrophic organisation Prince Claus Fund in Amsterdam, on behest of the Dutch Royal Family, for the period 2009-2011.

• Amazon -

  Laksmi Pamuntjak is one of Indonesia’s most versatile bilingual authors. She is a bilingual journalist and an award-winning food writer as well as a poet, translator, and novelist. The Question of Red, her bestselling first novel, was short-listed for the Khatulistiwa Literary Award, appeared on the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’s Top 8 list of the best books of the Frankfurt Book Fair 2015, and was named #1 on Germany’s Weltempfaenger (Receivers of the World) list of the best works of fiction from Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Carribean translated into German. It also won the German LiBeraturpreis for 2016. Pamuntjak was selected as the Indonesian representative for Poetry Parnassus at the 2012 London Olympics. She works as an art and food consultant, writes opinion articles on culture and politics for the Guardian, and divides her time between Berlin and Jakarta.

  Visit her online:
  Facebook: Laksmi Pamuntjak
  Twitter: @laksmiwrites
  Instagram: #LaksmiWrites

Pamuntjak, Laksmi: THE BIRDWOMAN'S PALATE

Kirkus Reviews. (Jan. 1, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Pamuntjak, Laksmi THE BIRDWOMAN'S PALATE AmazonCrossing (Adult Fiction) $24.95 2, 1 ISBN: 978-1-5039-3734-5
Unmarried at 35, chubby, and self-critical, Aruna Rai spends more time observing her life than living it. She pines after a man who is not interested in her, works at a job she is not passionate about, and soothes herself with the tastes of Indonesian cuisine.
An epidemiologist from Jakarta, Aruna travels with her colleague Farish across Indonesia to review cases of humans hospitalized with avian flu. She invites along two friends who will fill off-duty hours by sampling local cuisine with her. Bono, a chef, has a list of places and foods they must try. Nadezhda, a gorgeous food and lifestyle writer, has attitude to spare and philosophies to share. After speaking to hospital personnel and the patients' families, Aruna suspects the cases of human bird flu are being faked. (But why? The story never quite pins it down definitively.) When her boss pulls her off the assignment, the four companions decide to complete the trip anyway. After all, there is so much food yet to be sampled. Despite long discussions about bird flu and food, the book is not really about either but rather a patchwork-quilt character study of Aruna. The reader-cum-therapist analyzes Aruna's dreams (most chapters begin with one), hears her inner angst over Nadezhda's beauty and her own plainness ("like champagne and popcorn"), and sees her fear of being alone (while at the same time she shuts herself off from people)--and tastes every bite of food she does. Aruna is likable, honest, bright, and full of wry humor. But as for the book having a strong arc, a steadily moving plot, a surprising climax before denouement...not so much.
The novel is overstuffed with food, which tends to water down what could be a strong story of a young woman fighting for her integrity despite setbacks in her social life and in the workplace. The strength of this novel is the heroine herself, the girl next door, a loyal friend, and a funny philosopher.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Pamuntjak, Laksmi: THE BIRDWOMAN'S PALATE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Jan. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A520735779/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=4bbb0c9d. Accessed 16 May 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A520735779

• The Hindu
  http://www.thehindu.com/books/books-reviews/An-epic-retelling/article17103111.ece
  Word count: 898

  An epic retelling

  Keshava Guha
  January 28, 2017 16:10 IST
  Updated: January 27, 2017 17:17 IST
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  Amba: The Question of Red; Laksmi Pamuntjak, translated from the Indonesian by the author, Speaking Tiger, ₹499.
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  Amba foregrounds the Mahabharata, a cultural heritage shared by India and Indonesia.
  In per capita terms, few national literatures have travelled as little as that of Indonesia. Until recently, Pramoedya Anantya Toer was the only Indonesian writer with an international following; and even his foreign readership largely consisted of writers and critics. It is only in the past two years that an Indonesian writer has risen to global fame, in the form of Eka Kurniawan, author of the magical realist novels Beauty is a Wound and Man Tiger.
  Literature, and novels in particular, are key agents of cultural transmission; and the failure of Indonesian fiction to travel has contributed to a broader ignorance about the world’s fourth-most-populous country, one that is described reductively as “the world’s largest Muslim nation”, with little acknowledgement of its social and cultural and diversity.
  In India, this ignorance is near-total, despite our deep cultural links with Indonesia. Amba: the Question of Red, Laksmi Pamuntjak’s first novel, would appear at first glance to be perfectly suited to the Indian reader who wishes to discover Indonesia through fiction. It has geographical sweep: the settings range from Yogyakarta, the cultural heartland of the Javanese, to Buru in the Maluku or Spice Islands. It is both an epic romance and a meditation on modern Indonesian history: in particular, the mass purge of Communists undertaken by General Suharto in 1965-66, a massacre of over 500,000 people that has been written out of Indonesian history and is virtually unknown to the world. And it foregrounds our shared cultural heritage, in the form of the Mahabharata.
  The Indonesian version of the Mahabharata differs, in many respects, from the Indian one. In varying forms, both feature the tragic story of the princess Amba, who is kidnapped by Bhishma in order to be wed to his half-brother Vichitryavirya. When she asserts her right to be returned to the king Salva, her betrothed, Bhishma releases her; but Salva, arguing that she is Bhishma’s by conquest, rejects her.
  Pamuntjak’s Amba reads this story as a love triangle; Amba, as she sees it, fell in love with Bhishma, and her eventual murder of him (as the male warrior Sikhandin in the Indian version and as Arjuna’s wife Srikandi in the Indonesian) is the revenge of a spurned lover. Her Amba is also a love triangle, the three characters named after their Mahabharata forebears.
  The title character is a student of English at Universitas Gajah Mada in Yogyakarta, in the mid-1960s; she is engaged to Salwa, whom her mother regards as an ideal son-in-law. On a trip to Kediri in east Java to volunteer at a hospital she meets Bhisma, a charismatic doctor, returned from Leipzig, and with Communist sympathies. They have a brief and intense love affair — conducted in less than two weeks — but, at a demonstration in Yogyakarta, they lose sight of each other, and are sundered forever.
  Amba goes on to marry a visiting German-American scholar, Adalhard Eilers. Forty years later, widowed, she receives an e-mail from Salwa, informing her that Bhisma is dead. She learns that, like 12,000 other Communists and sympathisers, he had been interned in 1966 on Buru, and never returned to Java.
  Amba moves between the 1960s and the 2000s; between Amba’s childhood and her time with Salwa, Bhisma and Adalhard, and her attempts, aided by Samuel, a younger man, to discover everything she can about Bhisma’s life and fate on Buru. Third-person narration is interpersed with epistolary, most notably in the form of an entire section comprising Bhisma’s letters to Amba from Buru; letters that did not reach her in his lifetime.
  In literary terms, Amba fails to deliver on the potential of its premise, either as an epic romance or as a reading of the Mahabharata. It has been translated by the author from the Indonesian into an English that is treacly, often anachronistic, and filled with toe-curling epigrams of this sort: “Sadness demanded a big heart. And hers wasn’t that big.” The novel’s compelling heart, Amba’s move from a traditional rural childhood to intellectual and political awakening in Yogyakarta and Kediri, as embodied by the competing charms of Salwa and Bhisma, is padded out with the entirely unnecessary story of Samuel, rendering the narrative baggy and unfocused. And there is little more to the book’s use of the Mahabharata than the names of the characters.
  Its achievement and its value lie instead in its evocation of a criminally neglected episode: the violent destruction of the Indonesian Communist party which claimed a membership of over 3 million. Amba’s warm and nuanced portrayal of young revolutionaries in 1960s Indonesia and its unflinching account of the purge and the internment camp on Buru, are an important and long-overdue reckoning with a period of history that many would rather forget or ignore altogether.
  Amba: The Question of Red; Laksmi Pamuntjak, translated from the Indonesian by the author, Speaking Tiger, ₹499.
  Keshava Guha is a writer based in Bengaluru.

• Mascara Literary Review
  http://mascarareview.com/jennifer-mackenzie-reviews-the-question-of-red-by-laksmi-pamuntjak/
  Word count: 1668

  Jennifer Mackenzie reviews The Question of Red by Laksmi Pamuntjak
  May 17, 2014 / mascara / 0 Comments
  The Question of Red
  by Laksmi Pamuntjak
  Gramedia Pustaka, 2013
  Reviewed by JENNIFER MACKENZIE

  From where she was standing, on the backyard of the hospital, the only objects she could make out were the parts chosen by the dying light. Idlehorse carts, bamboo bushes deep in sleep, an abandoned pile of buckets. She walked on, into a garden that suddenly opened up, ending in a tight barricade of trees. She heard the slapping of wings as birds tried to sneak into pockets of warmth amid the leaves. She could hear the gentle snap of twigs and their descent to the ground. There was nobody around. Then she saw a flash of light, a strange sheen from the direction of the thicket of the trees. It refracted through the landscape infusing it with sadness. Strangely it was the colour blue.
  Later, Amba would learn that Bhisma had never taken colours for granted. He would ask her endlessly about how she perceived different hues, listening intently to her descriptions, whether a poetic burst about a sunset or a reflection on a fruit as banal as the aubergine. When she finally understood the reason for this rich strangeness it would be too late: he would be long gone. For now, she walked toward that light. (181)

  Colour is central, as we may ascertain from the English title of Laksmi Pamuntjak’s The Question of Red (Amber in the Indonesian edition). The novel was launched at the Ubud Festival in October last year and colour glows with symbolic resonance over the surface of the narrative. In the passage quoted above, Amba is walking towards a light, which in its portentousness, will be the occasion of irrevocable change. But if it is the colour blue which appears to signify the embodiment of love, it is the colour red which appropriates and dominates, a volatile red broadcasting the dangerous, unpredictable and bloody world of revolutionary Indonesia in the 1960’s. And it is red, with all these connotations as we will come to understand, which the colour-blind Bhisma is unable to perceive, which will separate the doomed lovers, Amba and Bhisma.
  The Question of Red is in part a bildungsroman set in an era of political turbulence. A young girl, Amba, fulfils her dream to study at university, rejects her devoted suitor Salwa, and has a brief passionate love affair with Bhisma, a worldly doctor educated in Europe. Parallels are drawn, a little heavy handedly, with characters of similar names and destinies as in the classic tale of the Mahabharata. There appears to be no irony in the depiction of Amba’s father, Sudarminto, bestowing the fate of the name upon his daughter. The Question of Red tells the multi-vocal story of Amba and Bhisma’s love affair, which begins in a hospital in Kediri in East Java, and is played out in two short weeks, amidst the violent days surrounding the attempted coup and Suharto’s coming to power in 1966. Leaving the hospital Bhisma, who has left-wing sympathies, travels to Jogjakarta to treat a dangerously wounded revolutionary, accompanied by the apolitical Amba, a naïve student of literature at Universitas Gajah Mada. Significantly out of her depth and struggling to maintain the emotional thread to her lover, she is separated from him by the bombing of a protest rally they are attending, and never sees him again. Some years later, Bhisma is transported to the island of Buru, the notorious camp set up for political prisoners by the Suharto regime. When the novel begins Amba, now in her early sixties and having received a mysterious e-mail, travels there to discover his fate. The strength of The Question of Red lies very much in its evocation of place and mood. Changes in village life show traditional social structures being overtaken by new political agendas and a hardening of attitudes by an increasingly divided populace employing intense and heated rhetoric no matter what their political persuasion. Engaged to Salwa, but troubled by his undemonstrative devotion, Amba moves to Jogjakarta and at first her studies go well. Campus life is fondly described.
  However, political strife both distracts and impedes her studies. To break the impasse, she takes the rash step of journeying to strife-torn Kediri to help out in the hospital office where she meets Bhisma. Bhisma has been working in the hospital where victims of communal conflict are brought in daily, and he has been treating patients of every political colour. But the properties of colour, the question of colour for him “can be a problem …I have to guess the colour by its light. I can’t tell if the berets worn by the soldiers who come to the hospital are red or green!” (227) Fundamentally, colour-blindness leaves Bhisma exposed, both politically and personally, as it compromises his capacity to clearly read signs of danger. It was on the third day of October when news came through that PKI (Communist Party of Indonesia) leader Aidit had fled to Jogjakarta. At this point, Bhisma and Amba are drawn into the conflict.
  The scenes in Jogjakarta are particularly well-drawn by Pamuntjak, as she conveys the volatility and crisis-charged behaviour of the revolutionaries. She also convincingly portrays the action of people attempting to retain some kind of normalcy through this situation. Bhisma takes Amba to an artist colony which he considers ‘safe’, a place raided by soldiers a few days later. Amba, desperately clinging to her love for Bhisma, Is shown choosing clothes as if she is going to a party, deciding on a red blouse as a suitable item to wear to the ill-fated rally, a choice which has tragic consequences for both of them.
  The novel portrays locations vividly and incorporates key historical events without weighing down the narrative. With much sensitivity, Pamuntjak describes the response of a local man, Samuel, to Buru post-prison:
  It is the afternoon. Amba and Samuel are sitting on the stone seats beneath an assembly of trees in a schoolyard in the village of Walgan … He [Samuel] sees anew how pretty the school is. Banana trees line the outer walls, while inside the courtyard is hedged by a row of duku and turi, and a durian tree. The sense of prison has gone, now its fences and borders resemble nothing of the Buru that raised Samuel. But at the back, where pinang, aren and tall grass spill out uncontrollably far into idle land, the school suddenly looks endangered and vulnerable, for there it is no longer sheltered under a signage, no longer fenced in. (64)
  The scene suggests the absence of Bhisma, the silence emanating from many untold stories and the crisis to which Samuel is a witness. Pamuntjak is at her best conveying place, from village life to Jogjakarta, from Buru to the Jakarta art world.
  Being a large rather unwieldy novel encompassing many time-frames and a large number of characters and settings, the book’s main difficulty lies with characterisation, a difficulty which could have been effectively addressed with astute editing. The narrative would have sparkled with the elimination of certain sub-plots; for example, the story of Samuel merely diffuses rather than encapsulates the intensity of Amba’s search for Bhisma. In the English version reviewed here there is also a problem with register, with the occasional colloquialism and anachronism having a jarring effect. In regard to characterisation, it is difficult to reconcile the early portrait of Amba with the woman viewed by Samuel, and pointedly, by Amba and Bhisma’s daughter, Srikandi, with the shift from interiority to appraisal being quite unsuccessful. The depiction of Amba growing up as a mild rebel in a fairly conventional family of wise father, thwarted mother and empty-headed sisters is followed by an extended piece delineating her insecurities in relationship to Bhisma, and this lengthy piece works against the image of her as a strong and independent woman, the version which the reader is supposed to accept. The reduction of this depiction of insecurity would have strengthened the novel considerably. The idealisation of male figures in Amba’s life is also something of a weakness, a problem that is somewhat addressed through the forthright character of Srikandi. There are also unexplained absences in the plot. It is not clear why Bhisma did not attempt to find Amba in the years following the coup, and for Amba to excuse her lack of action as due to a sense of unworthiness, is rather exasperating as issome of the second-guessing going on with various plot tie-ups. These deficiencies significantly reduce the impact of Bhisma’s Buru letters to Amba.
  Despite these problems with plot and characterisation, The Question of Red is at its best in presenting the days prior to the Indonesian holocaust of 1966, and in its sense of the personal tragedies it brought to so many, when the country’s dream of freedom and independence lost all colour and was reduced to ashes. It is from this perspective that we can view a scene late in the book when Srikandi, daughter of colour-blind Bhisma, at her exhibition opening, is asked why there is so much red in her work:
  I grew up with red you see, it has been the colour of my life. I learned at school, of course, that red meant one thing: Communism, and I understood how that made us all fear it… At home as a child I grew up with the most glorious shades of red – ruby, scarlet, vermillion, puce, carmine, claret, burgundy, crimson, magenta, damask, garnet, maroon, and I knew the power of each of those names. And for that I have my mother to thank. She was a warrior, someone who was not afraid of anything.” (332/3)

  JENNIFER MACKENZIE is the author of Borobudur (Transit Lounge 2009) reprinted in Indonesia as Borobudur and Other Poems (Lontar, Jakarta 2012)

• Historical Novel Society
  https://historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews/the-question-of-red/
  Word count: 367

  The Question of Red
  By Laksmi Pamuntjak

  Find & buy on
  Following an awe-inspiring prologue, in which the Hindu epic Mahabharata is synopsized, the novel opens in 2006 in a hospital in tropical Buru Island, Indonesia. Two unconscious women in their sixties are being treated for knife wounds. Apparently one of the ladies, Amba, a Javanese visiting from Jakarta, had been attacked by the other, Makaburung, the local chieftain’s adopted daughter. The women were discovered in a cemetery, where Amba lay clinging to a grave, bleeding, while Makaburung knelt nearby, holding a bloodied knife and also bleeding from apparently self-inflicted wounds. A day later, an Ambonese man, Samuel, walks into the hospital demanding to see Amba. He is also visiting Buru and had met Amba on the ferry. Although Samuel had offered to help Amba locate her former lover, Doctor Bhisma, she had vanished. Amba and Bhisma were separated forty years ago during the Suharto regime’s crackdown on Communists. Amba reveals her life story during Indonesia’s tumultuous 1960s, which is no less tragic than the timeless Mahabharata.
  Laksmi Pamuntjak has penned an admirable novel by using the tools of historical fiction to connect an ancient mythical tale to recent Indonesian history. The narrative is told through the heart-rending experiences of characters named shrewdly from the legend. The evocative descriptions of the mass murders and life in the prison camps make that dark period come alive. The metaphor of color is used effectively in the plot. The cast of numerous characters and many subplots, as well as descriptions that are sometimes too detailed, makes this a long-winded read. While the reason for Amba not returning to Bura sooner is not fully explained, the reverse chronology format captures interest. This novel was awarded the prestigious 2016 German LiBeraturpreis. It should appeal particularly to humanists and especially those unfamiliar with Indonesian culture and history.

  Details
  Publisher
  AmazonCrossing
  Published
  2016
  Genre
  Literary
  Century
  20th Century
  Price
  (US) $14.95
  ISBN
  (US) 9781503936430
  Format
  Paperback
  Pages
  476
  Review
  Appeared in
  HNR Issue 78 (November 2016)
  Reviewed by
  Waheed Rabbani

• Qantara.de
  https://en.qantara.de/content/laksmi-pamuntjaks-novel-the-question-of-red-the-silence-is-broken
  Word count: 1585

  Laksmi Pamuntjak′s novel "The Question of Red"
  The silence is broken
  In her novel "The Question of Red", Indonesian author Laksmi Pamuntjak effectively combines the multi-faceted nature of the island state′s sociopolitical system and its bloody recent history with the fate of her fictional protagonists. Bettina David read the book
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  On the Islamic island of Java, many people are named after figures from the Hindu epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, populated by gods and heroes – names that still stand for beauty and gallantry, grace and wisdom. However, as Laksmi Pamuntjak writes at the very start of her novel "The Question of Red", you won′t find an Amba there - her fate in the Mahabharata seems too awful:
  The king′s daughter, promised to King Salwa, is kidnapped by the mighty warrior Bhisma. In the end, she is cast off by both men: Salwa rejects her, and Bhisma, bound by a vow he has taken, cannot accept her love. Re-born as the Amazonian Princess Srikandi, she exacts terrible revenge, killing the indomitable Bhisma. But with Bhisma's horrific death - hundreds of Srikandi's arrows bore into his body - the war between the brothers Pandawa and Kaurawa also comes to an end. The enemy camps are united in grief for the great Bhisma.
  In her sweeping first novel, Laksmi Pamuntjak has taken on no less a task than writing this ancient tale anew, connecting the myth to more recent Indonesian history, the course of which has been just as bloody.
  Javan syncretism and social tensions
  Her heroine, Amba, grows up in the 1950s in a small provincial town in Central Java. In the depiction of her childhood, the traditional Javanese world that you might find in an ethnographic picture book is brought to life before your eyes: her father is a teacher, his understanding of the world deeply saturated in tolerant Islamic-Javanese syncretism. He loves shadow puppetry and the Hindu-Javanese legends performed through it. Her mother, meanwhile, is a former singer with a gamelan orchestra. Her main concern is to push her daughter into a speedy marriage with the likeable Salwa. Her father shows more understanding for his eldest daughter's thirst for knowledge - Amba would prefer to study English first at university in Yogyakarta.

  For "The Question of Red“ the 43-year-old author Laksmi Pamuntjak chose the epic form to present the fallout from the events of 1965: decades later a woman is on a quest to find her lover, who was abducted to the prison island of Buru during the sixties purge
  But already, social polarisations are starting to emerge; these will intensify and, in the mid-1960s, lead to one of the largest mass murders of the twentieth century. Amba′s father, for whom the preservation of national unity is more important than anything else, votes for Sukarno′s nationalism in the 1955 election, while his wife sympathises with the Communists. In Salwa's family, the insurmountable differences between Islamic traditionalism and modernism cause tensions to develop. For Amba, the poems of writers such as T.S. Eliot and Sylvia Plath open up a whole new world beyond these deepening local divisions.
  Although she is already engaged to Salwa, she falls head over heels in love during a short trip to Kediri in East Java with Bhisma Rashad, a doctor newly returned from his studies in Zurich. It is the summer of 1965, and the country is on the brink of civil war. Sukarno′s populist rhetoric of an alliance between nationalist, religious groups and Communists ("NASAKOM") disregards the social tensions in rural parts of Java, and doesn′t mention the role of the army, one of the state′s most important centres of power.
  As the political situation reaches a head, and on 30 September 1965 finally leads to a momentous attempted coup and the murder of six high-ranking generals, Amba and Bhisma have a short-lived, passionate love affair.
  In the chaos and violence of those October days, they lose each other. Amba, who senses a new life starting to grow inside her, manages to save herself. Bhisma, however, is arrested – he was friends with Communists. At the start of the 1970s, under the Suharto regime, he is imprisoned in one of the notorious camps for political prisoners on the East Indonesian island of Buru.
  Forty years later, Amba learns of Bhisma′s death on Buru. She goes in search of information, hoping after decades of agonising uncertainty to find an answer to her questions about him, his love for her and the fate that binds them together.
  Writing against silence
  The novel, divided into seven "books", switches expertly between love story and historical chronicle, poetic interludes and personal memories. Pamuntjak′s link between the many socio-political layers that make up the island nation, its bloody recent history, and the fate of her protagonists, is convincing on a literary level.
  "Book 4", on Bhisma′s disappearance in 1965, consists of a single large X – language can hardly do justice to the obliteration of a person, the silence about his fate, and the speechlessness in the face of the violence that has gripped the country. Only in the period after Suharto can Amba, who is now over 60, begin to work through her personal history – which is also that of Indonesia – with the aid of letters from Bhisma that were never sent from the prison camp.
  To this day the mass murders of that time, to which more than half a million people fell victim, are a taboo subject. The murderers were never brought to trial – in fact, more than 15 years since the end of Suharto′s dictatorship, they still enjoy the greatest respect and continue to occupy influential positions. There has never been an official reappraisal of what happened, even though there have been many dedicated initiatives since 1998 on both a national and a local level, to give the victims back their voices and stop them being forgotten.

  Haunted by Suharto: in her novel ″Pulang″, Leila Chudori addresses the Suharto legacy and its impact on modern Indonesian society
  "The Question of Red" is without doubt one of the most important and literarily successful novels to take on the traumatic consequences of the events of 1965/66. Having said that, the press may be a little premature in their celebration of authors like Laksmi Pamuntjak, Leila Chudori and Ayu Utami – all linked to the Salihara Cultural Centre in Jakarta – whose works supposedly dare to break the silence for the first time. This has caused outrage among authors critical of Salihara, including Linda Christanty and A.S. Laksana. They have rightly pointed out that even under Suharto, authors such as Umar Kayam and Ahmad Tohari produced a great deal of criticism, which took a lot more courage then than it does now.
  Two contemporary novels about the traumatic events of 1965
  "Amba" – the title of the Indonesian original – came out in 2012, and Leila Chudori′s novel "Pulang", which also deals with the consequences of 1965, was published the same year. It is hardly possible to talk about the first novel without mentioning the second.
  Both books repeatedly reference the world of Javanese shadow-puppetry. They use it to continue telling traditional myths in new ways, though the books also serve the orientalising view of the West, which has idealised shadow puppetry ever since the colonial era. In this view, it becomes a timeless symbol, revealing everything about a Javanese "soul" that has remained almost untouched by Islam.
  Western poetry plays an important role. The protagonists of both novels are extraordinarily well-read. This reflects the idea of a "world culture", which has exerted a great influence on the self-image of intellectuals in Indonesia since the mid-twentieth century. Placing themselves within this tradition, the secularly-oriented authors also disengage from Islam, which as a global ideology is currently having an increasing impact on the thinking of Indonesia′s urban middle classes.
  The past is primarily dealt with by focusing on the fate of "innocent" victims: in both Chudori′s and Pamuntjak′s books, the central protagonists Bhisma and Dimas sympathise with Communist ideals, but express clear reservations about any form of party politics, and are not party members.
  The search for a depolarising middle way
  Rather than providing polarising portrayals of good and evil, both authors attach great importance to gradations of grey. That in itself is an important step, after more than 30 years of heavy anti-Communist indoctrination and the demonisation of all leftist thinking by the Suharto regime. The focus on the "grey centre" does admittedly avoid a deeper examination of the polarisation that split society at the time. The world of committed Communists, massacring soldiers and militias remains in the background in both novels, part of a disastrous political dynamic that brings calamity and suffering on the books′ protagonists.
  If you believe the reviews on goodreads.com, Chudori′s "Pulang" caters to Indonesian readers′ taste for light novels more than Laksmi Pamuntjak′s book, which is more of a literary heavyweight. Arguably the latter is more likely to appeal to Western tastes. At the same time, both novels are very Indonesian: they adopt a westernised stance, and yet, despite their aim to enlighten readers, maintain a balanced position in the middle ground, avoiding direct confrontation.
  Bettina David
  © Qantara.de 2015
  Translated from the German by Ruth Martin

• Shuffle Book Box
  https://shufflebookbox.wordpress.com/2018/01/08/book-review-the-birdwomans-palate-by-laksmi-pamuntjak/
  Word count: 828

  Book Review: The Birdwoman’s Palate by LAKSMI PAMUNTJAK

  Published: 01/02/2018
  364 pages
  Format: Kindle
  Rating:

  In this exhilarating culinary novel, a woman’s road trip through Indonesia becomes a discovery of friendship, self, and other rare delicacies.
  Aruna is an epidemiologist dedicated to food and avian politics. One is heaven, the other earth. The two passions blend in unexpected ways when Aruna is asked to research a handful of isolated bird flu cases reported across Indonesia. While it’s put a crimp in her aunt’s West Java farm, and made her own confit de canard highly questionable, the investigation does provide an irresistible opportunity.
  It’s the perfect excuse to get away from corrupt and corrosive Jakarta and explore the spices of the far-flung regions of the islands with her three friends: a celebrity chef, a globe-trotting “foodist,” and her coworker Farish.
  From Medan to Surabaya, Palembang to Pontianak, Aruna and her friends have their fill of local cuisine. With every delicious dish, she discovers there’s so much more to food, politics, and friendship. Now, this liberating new perspective on her country—and on her life—will push her to pursue the things she’s only dreamed of doing.

  I’ve picked this book as one of my Kindle First in January, partially because I’m doing Reading Challenge at The Fiction Cafe Book club and the first one was to read a book with a food item on the cover. I’ve had few book contestants for this challenge but as soon as I saw this cover, I knew I had to buy it. It just so colourful and pretty, yes I do judge book by it’s cover. However now I will judge it also by its content.
  The Birdwoman’s Palate is novel about two main topics – food and avian flu. Two very unlikely topics and following a story of two colleagues Aruna and Farish traveling across Indonesia to research suspected cases of avian flu being transferred to humans. Joining them on this journey, but for different reason are Aruna’s friends Bono and Nadezda, all joined by friendship and their love for food.
  Food obsessed friends have lists of different dishes and places they have heard or read of and trying to taste all amazing foods of Indonesia in different parts. Meanwhile Aruna and Farish are visiting hospitals and talking with patients to bring a report back to Jakarta.
  However surreal these two subjects sound, there is underlying story of corruption, jealousy and even love. Story and characters evolve in nice manner and you learn more about Indonesia, lives people lead in different parts, Sharia law enforced in some parts as well as mix of religion and customs in the others.
  Each chapter starts with Aruna’s dream. All different, some extremely random (just what dreams are) but some really interesting with deep message. I also enjoyed some references and connections between people and food, especially Aruna and Nadezda being compared to Popcorn and Champagne, it was so fitting and brilliant and added to explaining characters better in its special way.
  I usually enjoy books about traveling, love books with food and different dishes but I really struggled to connect with this book. Food references were too deep and as I’ve never traveled to Asia, I found all names of the dishes blending into one. It was really really full of food, which made me hungry at times, but mostly just pages and pages of dishes, which sounded good, but contained so many ingredients and so much information, it became tiring.
  Subject of avian flu sounded also very interesting but it became a bit boring later and I focused more on characters and their relationship, rather than anything more.
  All in all it was ok read, I’ve enjoyed some parts and struggled with others, however for a food lover, especially well traveled, it could have a different feel and be more enjoyable so if you are one of them, I can recommend it. There were definitely parts that any of us can learn from but for me it wasn’t enough to truly enjoy it.

  LAKSMI PAMUNTJAK
  Laksmi Pamuntjak is a bilingual Indonesian novelist, poet, food writer, journalist and co-founder of Aksara Bookstore. She works as an art and food consultant and writes for numerous local and international publications including opinion articles for the Guardian.
  She is the author of two collections of poetry (one of which, Ellipsis, appeared in the 2005 Herald UK Books of the Year pages); a treatise on the relationship between man and violence based on the Iliad; a collection of short stories based on paintings; five editions of the best-selling and award-winning Jakarta Good Food Guide; two translations of the works of Indonesian poet and essayist Goenawan Mohamad; and two best-selling novels.