‘Semen, blood and excrement’: the Indonesian novel that’s like story-telling on acid
Prize-winning author Eka Kurniawan’s latest novel Beauty is a Wound isn’t for the squeamish – but his writing is ‘the real thing’
Prize-winning Indonesian novelist Eka Kurniawan isn’t for the squeamish. Packed with semen, menstrual blood, excrement and urine, his tour-de-force, Beauty is a Wound (originally published as Cinta itu Luka) isn’t “la-di-da” chic-lit, an “adultery-in-bourgeois-Hampstead” novella or Euro-crime noir.
Instead, Kurniawan hurls his readers deep into the heart of Java, reminding us along the way that the world’s most densely-populated island (one hundred and fifty million souls and counting on an area the size of England...) is far more rambunctious than the “sopan santun”, carefully-calibrated demeanour and unblinking passivity of its courtly elite with their slow-moving palace dances and often indecipherable double-speak.
The novel is like story-telling on acid.
Densely-plotted and overflowing with characters and incidents, Beauty is a Wound is also studded with pithy one-liners. Witness the gangster Memen Gedeng’s frank assessment of mankind: “Every human is a mammal, just like a dog, and walks on two legs like a chicken.”
Moreover, Kurniawan’s Java is more than a mere backdrop.
