Writers from China's diaspora
Her trade might be cut-and-dried journalism but superstition and magic colour Dewi Anggraeni's latest novel, Snake (Indra Publishing). Concerned with the hold of the occult on the Chinese communities of Southeast Asia, the story revolves around a dancer called Serena.
To cement their relationship, her lover, Kurt, buys her a brooch in the shape of a paradise tree snake. The brooch was originally made for Serena's grandmother and may be cursed - each of its previous owners experienced outrageous misfortune.
Serena shows it to the Chinese mother of a friend. Wide-eyed, she tells Serena to watch out. 'When I was as young as you, I thought I was invincible, and I could conquer anything, especially something so undefined as a curse. However, I've been around long enough to know that there are things we can't explain,' she says. Misfortune follows Serena refusal to listen.
Anggraeni, 59, a correspondent for the English-language daily The Jakarta Post, paints her spooky tale as a pleasant break from the constraints of journalism, which oblige her to 'seek out different angles' and avoid fantasy.
The businessman's daughter, who has a master's degree in French literature from Universitas Indonesia and a diploma in education from Melbourne's La Trobe University, says she credits magic, to a point. 'I believe in everything a little bit,' she says. 'Maybe there is this longing on the part of people to believe in something like that because it's a reassuring thing.'
Snake was influenced by a cable TV news report about a cursed brooch. It reminded Anggraeni that, during her Indonesian childhood, she saw incidents that she says defied rational explanation, in particular possessions. 'Some of them looked like someone in an epileptic seizure, although when I explored further, the people had no epileptic background.'