Description
One afternoon, Dewi Ayu rises from her grave after twenty-one years—an impossible return that sets in motion a sprawling, darkly comic saga of her family in the coastal town of Halimunda. As Dewi Ayu’s story unfolds alongside those of her daughters, the novel braids personal tragedy with the shifting tides of Indonesian history, from Dutch colonial rule through war and independence. With a voice that blends folk legend, satire, and epic storytelling, the book moves through a cast of gangsters, rebels, prostitutes, and gravediggers to explore how beauty, power, and violence can wound—and how survival is never purely private. Bold, inventive, and sharply observant, this is a landmark work by Eka Kurniawan that uses grotesque humor and lyrical intensity to illuminate themes of identity, inheritance, and the costs of national and familial myth.
Available Editions
paperback
New Directions
Published Jan 1, 2015
470 pages
ISBN: 9780811223638
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Details
First Published
2015
Language
eng
Content Warnings
Content and trigger warnings for Beauty Is a Wound by Eka Kurniawan.