"When I was a teenager I grew up in a small city in Java where was no bookstore or library. Though literacy rates are high (93 per cent) among the 250 million strong population and Indonesia boasts over 1000 publishers, they have relatively few agents, which can make life hard for authors, (who) are often overlooked internationally."īut Kurniawan believes the real problem for Indonesian authors is that books are only available in big cities in the archipelago, while much of the population lives in villages. It's a moment Jasmin Kirkbride, writing on .uk, believes is long overdue: "Indonesian literature needs to be accepted into the international publishing scene in a far more meaningful way if it is to survive. And Indonesia is the guest of honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the world's biggest and oldest book festival, held from October 14 to 18. Kurniawan is a guest at the Melbourne and Brisbane Writers Festivals.
In its latest edition, Griffith Review features six Indonesian authors (see review below). Indonesia's literary offerings are enjoying something of a moment. The books must be written in my second language." "For instance I came from a Sundanese family – that's the spoken language at home. Kurniawan says the national language poses challenges for writers when Bahasa Indonesia is not their mother tongue. "It occupies a unique position in the history of the Indonesian novel, which many argue is still in an experimental and nascent stage – at least as new as the Indonesian language itself, which was nationally instituted in 1945 and has yet to supplant the hundreds of local languages spoken throughout the country as a mother tongue". "The novel is helping to establish Indonesia's voice, which remains under represented within world literature, and can also illuminate how world literature has influenced Indonesian writers," she wrote on the Pen America website (pen.org).
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