Adapted into a 2008 film, the book led to a surge in tourism to beautiful Belitung, just an hour’s flight from Jakarta. The narrator, Ikal, the young son of a miner, recounts the story of his classmates as they try to get an education despite an utter lack of resources: Their teachers are unpaid, and local authorities are threatening to close the crumbling school. This best-selling novel is based on the author’s upbringing in a poor area of the small eastern island Belitong. The Rainbow Troops by Andrea Hirata (2005) The Dancer is a good insight into where all this tension began. Even in 2018 many Indonesians believe Communism to be a genuine threat to the nation, and people continue to be jailed for displaying Communist symbols or espousing socialist beliefs. Understanding the shifts-urbanization and increased connectivity-that have taken place in everyday life in the past 50 years is crucial to knowing contemporary Indonesia, as it is to recognizing the continued impact of the violent political struggles of the 1960s. Tohari’s trilogy highlights a period rarely discussed in Indonesia (the post-1965 Communist massacres, in which as many as one million people may have been killed) and paints a picture of a rural Javanese way of life that no longer exists. This novel explores the intersection of traditional Javanese culture and beliefs with Islam and New Order politics, all through the lens of two women navigating a system from the bottom of the social ladder.Īlso set in a village in Java in the 1960s, The Dancer follows Srintil, a female ronggeng dancer who becomes unwittingly involved in the leftist September 30th Movement, and Rasus, the man she loves, who joins the military and embraces Islam.

Neither is able to escape the reach of Suharto’s increasingly authoritarian and corrupt regime. Marni is illiterate and puts her faith in the traditional gods Rahayu rejects ancestral beliefs, turning instead to Islam. Madasari’s portrayal of oppression under Suharto’s New Order government (1967–98) centers on mother and daughter Marni and Rahayu, who live in a Javanese village. The Years of the Voiceless by Okky Madasari (2010)

The Dancer by Ahmad Tohari