From Marrakesh, Moscow, to Spinoza
PERHAPS, this is part of a new fervor. Last Wednesday, two novels, Dadaisme by Dewi Sartika, and Geni Jora by Abidah el-Khalieqy, were jointly launched. They were, respectively, first prize and second prizewinners of the 2003 Jakarta Arts Council Novel Competition. Their creators are "Generation Internet", children of the world. Relying almost exclusively on personal correspondence and the Internet, three of the winners, all young women, use foreign shores as backdrops to their stories without ever having set foot on them. El-khalieqy, for instance, gives us the Middle East from her home in Jombang, in the heart of East Java. A hint of Karl May? Yet setting is not all there is to this phenomenon. In this special feature, TEMPO delves into our new contemporary novels, comparing them to the 1970s and the depiction of women in regional literature.
May 11, 2004
Introducing Galih…
A LECTURER at the Gadjah Mada University. Once, in the 1990s, he lived in Moscow. He had a Russian girlfriend called Krasnaya, who worked at the Kalinin Bookstore in Kalinin Prospekt. Together they bustled the distance between Moscow and St. Petersburg to visit Krasnaya's grandmother. And then it happened, the tragedy, in the twilight hours of Gorbachev's rule. Two shrouds, lying in front of the woman's old folks'
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