An Australian academic who has translated a veritable mountain of Malay and Indonesian texts, Harry Aveling has even dabbled in Hindi texts. As I talk to him, he points proudly to a brief letter written by a young girl to her mother, the poet Dorothea Rosa Herliany. This short and simple letter asks about her mother's well-being, and is full of wonder for the distanced, foreign world where her mother has traveled.

Dorothea's arrival in Melbo