Richard Oh

Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s Arok of Java: A Novel of Early Indonesia Translated by Max Lane Horizon Books 387 pages In his final critical hours, Pramoedya was rushed to a hospital. Lying in bed struggling for his life, he surprised everyone at his bedside with a request for his favorite kretek cigarette. When told he was [...]

The Tent By Margaret Atwood 155 Pages Bloomsbury If you were a multiple award-winning author and in between a serious book project, what would you do? Under the pressure from your publisher, you’d publish stuff that might in all likelihood be consigned to oblivion in one of your drawers. Stuff you desultorily jotted down on [...]

Everyman By Philip Roth Jonathan Cape 182 Pages Philip Roth is probably the most self-obsessed author you would come across in literature. For a period of time, he wrote about nothing else but himself, a Jewish boy from New Jersey, putting himself in characters such as Zuckermann or Roth, through trials and tribulations of the [...]

Kalau Revolusi Perancis sering dianggap sebagai ekspresi politik paling tinggi dari semangat Pencerahan, maka ekspresi dari subyektifitas Pencerahan yang paling tinggi yang pernah mampir di Indonesia bisa dikatakan ada dalam sajak-sajak Chairil Anwar. Bagaimana mungkin? Apa manfaatnya buat kita sekarang? “Aku” sebagai Deklarasi Subyek Pencerahan Bukan kebetulan bahwa pengenalan kita mengenai semangat jaman dari era [...]

The Romance of K’tut Tantri And Indonesia By Timothy Lindsey Equinox 347 Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it. This is the inscription on the opening page of Gabrielle Garcia Marquez’s autobiography Living To Tell the Tale. It was published in 2003. [...]