Beauty Is a Wound

by Eka Kurniawan, Annie Tucker (Translator)

Overview

The English-language debut of Indonesia's rising star.

The epic novel Beauty Is a Wound combines history, satire, family tragedy, legend, humor, and romance in a sweeping polyphony. The beautiful Indo prostitute Dewi Ayu and her four daughters are beset by incest, murder, bestiality, rape, insanity, monstrosity, and the often vengeful undead. Kurniawan’s gleefully grotesque hyperbole functions as a scathing critique of his young nation’s troubled past:the rapacious offhand greed of colonialism; the chaotic struggle for independence; the 1965 mass murders of perhaps a million “Communists,” followed by three decades of Suharto’s despotic rule.
 Beauty Is a Wound astonishes from its opening line: One afternoon on a weekend in May, Dewi Ayu rose from her grave after being dead for twenty-one years....  Drawing on local sources—folk tales and the all-night shadow puppet plays, with their bawdy wit and epic scope—and inspired by Melville and Gogol, Kurniawan’s distinctive voice brings something luscious yet astringent to contemporary literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780811223638
Publisher:	New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	09/08/2015
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	278,556
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.80(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

The internationally acclaimed author of Beauty Is a Wound and Man Tiger, Eka Kurniawan was born in West Java in 1975, the day that the little ex-Portuguese colony East Timor declared its sovereign independence.

Annie Tucker won a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Award for her Eka Kurniawan translation.

Editorial Reviews

…[a] rich, digressive, chronologically nimble, multistranded 470-page epic, by one of Indonesia's best-known writers. Set during the singularly tumultuous period from just before World War II through most of the rest of the 20th century, the book pulls off the bold feat of telling Dewi Ayu's family history while also telling Indonesia's in a way that doesn't seem heavy-handed or forced…this is an impressive, accomplished book. Gracefully translated by Annie Tucker, the writing is evocative and muscular, with particularly spicy descriptions and some good wry humor…The plot twists and the winding roads the characters' lives take are…complicated…But the book never spirals out of control, and Mr. Kurniawan does a masterly job of pulling together all the seemingly flyaway strands.

The New York Times - Sarah Lyall

…Kurniawan owes a clear debt to García Márquez, particularly in Beauty Is a Wound. Kurniawan does not merely traffic skillfully in magic realism; his Halimunda—like García Márquez's Macondo and Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County—lets him show how the currents of history catch, whirl, carry away and sometimes drown people…Indonesia's turbulent 20th century marches through Halimunda—independence, Japanese occupation, Suharto's vicious war against the Communists and the violent stagnation of his long, despotic rule. This risks making Kurniawan's work sound like a chore, which it is not. García Márquez could fall into sententiousness and grandiosity; Kurniawan, by contrast, has a wry, Javanese sense of humor.

The New York Times Book Review - Jon Fasman

★ 06/08/2015
At the beginning of this English-language debut from Indonesian author Kurniawan, Dewi Ayu, who was once the most respected prostitute in the fictional coastal town of Halimunda, rises from her grave after being dead for two decades. She's returned to pay a visit to her fourth daughter, Beauty, who is famously ugly. What follows is an unforgettable, all-encompassing epic of Indonesian history, magic, and murder, jumping back to Dewi Ayu's birth before World War II, in the last days of Dutch rule, and continuing through the Japanese occupation and the mass killings following the attempted coup by the Indonesian Communist Party in the mid-1960s. Kurniawan centers his story on Dewi Ayu and her four daughters and their families. Readers witness Dewi Ayu's imprisonment in the jungle during the war, a pig turning into a person, a young Communist named Comrade Kliwon engaging in guerrilla warfare, and a boy cheating in school by asking ghosts for help. Indeed, the combination of magic, lore, and pivotal events reverberating through generations will prompt readers to draw parallels between Kurniawan's Halimunda and García Márquez's Macondo. But Kurniawan's characters are all destined for despair and sorrow, and the result is a darker and more challenging read than One Hundred Years of Solitude. There is much physical and sexual violence, but none of it feels gratuitous—every detail seems essential to depicting Indonesia's tragic past. Upon finishing the book, the reader will have the sense of encountering not just the history of Indonesia but its soul and spirit. This is an astounding, momentous book. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"Brash, worldly and wickedly funny, Eka Kurniawan may be South-East Asia’s most ambitious writer in a generation."

The Economist

"It’s an astonishing, polyphonic epic, a melange of satire, grotesquerie, and allegory that incorporates everything from world history to local folk talks."

Brooklyn Magazine - Phillip Pantuso

"Gracefully translated by Annie Tucker, the writing is evocative and muscular, with particularly spicy descriptions and some good wry humor."

The New York Times - Sarah Lyall

"Refreshingly, Kurniawan puts value on literature as entertainment, and his books are certainly that."

The Guardian - Deborah Smith

"As translated by Annie Tucker, Kurniawan’s prose is lucid and occasionally lyrical but never showy."

SF Chronicle - Anthony Domestico

"Kurniawan’s story of an undead woman had morphed into the story of modern Indonesia, an epic novel critics are more wont to compare to One Hundred Years of Solitude and The Canterbury Tales."

Sydney Morning Herald

"Very striking."

Tariq Ali

"An arresting portrait of Indonesia’s struggle for nationhood, delights in obscenity: no topic is spared from its bloodthirsty brand of satire."

The New Yorker - Gillian Terzis

"Eka’s approach in Beauty… mixes seriousness with irreverence, juxtaposing historical fact and magical realism in a manner reminiscent of Salman Rushdie."

ArtReview Asia - Clarissa Oon

"Kurniawan does not merely traffic skillfully in magic realism; his Halimunda — like García Márquez’s Macondo and Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County — lets him show how the currents of history catch, whirl, carry away and sometimes drown people."

The New York Times - John Fasman

"A vivacious translation of a comic but emotionally powerful Indonesian novel."

PEN America

"Both Man Tiger and Beauty Is a Wound constitute a retort from the present to the dark times, while also acknowledging that the dark times may not yet be over. Against the killings of those years and the collective amnesia used to blank out the fate of the victims—a kind of second death, as it were—Kurniawan’s fiction summons its legions of ghosts."

The New Republic - Siddhartha Deb

"Without a doubt the most original, imaginatively profound, and elegant writer of fiction in Indonesia today: its brightest and most unexpected meteorite. Pramoedya Ananta Toer has found a successor."

The New Left Review - Benedict Anderson

★ 09/15/2015
This English-language debut of trending Indonesian author Kurniawan opens with beautiful prostitute Dewi Ayu arising from the grave after 21 years and encountering her child Beauty, whom she had cursed with ugliness. The initial feeling of legend, dare one say magic realism, is quickly overtaken by the brutal facts of Indonesian history, from the last gasp of Dutch colonialism to World War II and the bloody battle for independence and against presumed Communists. VERDICT A lush, raucous, and fabulous saga.

Library Journal

★ 2015-06-14
English-language debut of a celebrated Indonesian author. "One afternoon on a weekend in May, Dewi Ayu rose from her grave after being dead for 21 years." With this surprising sentence, Kurniawan sets the stage for an epic picaresque that's equal parts Canterbury Tales and Mahabharata. Weaving back in forth in time, moving from character to character, the author tells the story of Indonesia from its Dutch colonial days, through the Japanese occupation during World War II, and into independence as a modern state. Kurniawan's characters are broadly drawn, but they aren't one-dimensional. Dewi Ayu, the most sought-after prostitute in the seaside city of Halimunda, is a shrewd, fearless, and resourceful woman but an ambivalent mother. Her lover, Maman Gendeng, is a romantic thug. The soldier Sodancho is both an illustrious revolutionary and a self-serving racketeer; he's also a rapist. These contradictions are more mythic than psychologically subtle, a reminder that few heroes are purely heroic. The great warriors of yore often come across as bullies and thugs, and when Homer called Ulysses "wily," it wasn't meant as a compliment. Some readers may object to this author's blithe depiction of horrors—including incest, bestiality, and murder—but that, too, makes good folkloric sense. In fairy tales, monstrosity is a sign, and violence is a catalyst; the concept of lingering trauma has no hold on the folk imagination and no place in the world Kurniawan has constructed. There are undoubtedly references and resonances here that are meaningful only to those well-versed in Indonesian history and indigenous storytelling traditions, but that's as it should be: Kurniawan is an Indonesian writer. That said, Anglophone readers are lucky to have access to this exuberantly excessive and captivating novel. Huge ambition, abundantly realized.

Kirkus Reviews