Customer Reviews

It's Not an All Night Fair

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Originally published in 1951, and then appearing in English translation in 1973, this slim Indonesian novella seems a rather unlikely candidate for paperback reissue some 55 years later. The story, what little there is of it, is very elemental -- the eldest son in a family travels from the big city (Djakarta) back to his home village to sit by his father's deathbed. And while there are bits and pieces of ethnographic detail for those interested in such matters, the book's main concern is the son's attempt to find some meaning in his schoolteacher father's life, and thus derive some meaning to his own life. There's a lot of sighing and weeping about the troubles of war (the Japanese occupied Indonesia from 1942-45) and colonial rule (following the Japanese expulsion, it took another four years before the Dutch relinquished control of the country) -- which contributed to the father's current illness and the son's lengthy stint as a political prisoner.

Toer wrote this when he was around 25, and one gets the sense that it's very much autobiographical (he was imprisoned by the Dutch for anti-colonial views). In the end, it's hard to know what to make of the novella, which runs to about 70 pages once you account for the blank pages. It's a familiar existential crisis, albeit enacted in a setting far removed from our own -- but one that left me relatively unmoved. Although readers may be tempted (as I was) by its brevity, the book probably isn't the best introduction to Toer's work. Readers interested in this major figure of world literature may be more engaged by his WWII novel The Fugitive, or may wish to dip into his short story collection All That is Gone. Truly intrepid souls can embark on his masterpiece, the 1,500+ page Buru Quartet (The Earth of Mankind, Child of All Nations, Footsteps, House of Glass), set during the Dutch colonial era and composed while Toer was imprisoned for 14 years as a Communist sympathizer.

Note: The English translation of this novella was originally published in the academic journal Indonesia and the full text of that article (including the introduction) is available as a free 7MB download at the journal's web site.

This is a wierd story, but very affecting. I loved reading it and hope you will too.