Jokowi and the New Indonesia: How the world sees an Indonesian President Guest post from Tim Hannigan

UK-based Tim Hannigan writes mainly about Asia, especially Indonesia. He is the author of three history books: Murder in the Hindu Kush; Raffles and the British Invasion of Java; and A Brief History of Indonesia. He also edited and expanded A Brief History of Bali and wrote A Geek in Indonesia. He has written travel features for newspapers and magazines in Asia, the Middle East, North America and the UK, and has contributed to various radio and television documentaries on Asian history. He has also worked on guidebooks to destinations including Bali, Nepal, Myanmar, and India, and written and edited Indonesian phrasebooks. He works on travel writing as an academic. His research has been published in various journals and edited collections, including Studies in Travel Writing, Journeys and The Journal of Commonwealth Literature. 

Now, with Darmawan Prasodjo, a political insider with unparalleled access to the president and an intimate first-hand knowledge of his decision-making processes, Tim has co-written Jokowi and the New Indonesia: A Political Biography.

In 2014, Joko Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi, was elected the seventh president of the Republic of Indonesia, going on to win a second five-year term in 2019. Raised amid poverty in a riverside slum and with a background in the furniture export trade, Jokowi broke the mould for political leaders in the world's third-largest democracy. His meteoric rise came without the benefit of personal connections to the traditional elites who have dominated Indonesian politics for three-quarters of a century, making this a true rags to riches story.

This new official biography tells the story of how the boy from the riverbank made it to the presidential palace in record time. It explains how Jokowi's background and heritage have created a distinctive style of politics and informed his ambitious development goals, including massive infrastructure projects, universal healthcare and a reimagining of Indonesia's educational system. It also looks at how a man raised with a traditionally Javanese worldview negotiates the tensions, contradictions and conflicts of this vast archipelagic nation.

Here, Tim discusses Jokowi’s international image...

Margaret Kartomi talks about Performing the Arts of Indonesia

Margaret Kartomi is Professor of Music at the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music, Monash University, in Melbourne. She is author of numerous publications on the music cultures of Sumatra and other parts of Indonesia.

She edited Performing the Arts of Indonesia: Malay Identity and Politics in the Music, Dance and Theatre of the Riau Islands, a new book exploring the artistic culture of Indonesia’s recently autonomous Riau Islands Province, Kepulauan Riau, colloquially referred to by its acronym, Kepri.  

Located in the centre of the Malay-speaking world of Southeast Asia, Kepri shares a border with Singapore and Malaysia and spans the Strait of Melaka and the South China Sea. Its 2,408 or so islands are sprinkled across its waters "like a shake of pepper" (Segantang Lada). Since the mid-19th century Kepri has widely been regarded as both the birthplace of modern Malay and its literature, and also as a centre of Islamic knowledge. Like Aceh, it acquired a reputation as "the verandah of Mecca", thanks to the large numbers of pilgrims who departed from its shores over the centuries. 

Margaret here explains how the book's contributors offer fresh new perspectives on Kepri's arts and artists.

Indonesia as London Book Fair Market Focus 2019

The London Book Fair is one of the global marketplaces for publishers. This year's fair takes place next week. Each year, the fair chooses one country to be the market focus; this year, that country is Indonesia.

UK-based Monsoon Books publishes books about Asia, and has strong links with publishers in Indonesia. Phillip Tatham, publisher of Monsoon Books, here looks ahead to the Indonesian focus at LBF.

Backlist books: The Annotated Malay Archipelago by Alfred Russel Wallace (edited by John van Wyhe)

Backlist books is a column by Lucy Day Werts that focuses on enduring, important works from or about Asia.

This post is about The Annotated Malay Archipelago, a version of the book that 19th-century naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace wrote based on journals from his eight-year journey among the islands of Southeast Asia several years after his return to England. It was originally published in two volumes in 1869, and has never been out of print.

Wallace, a contemporary and correspondent of Charles Darwin, helped develop, or at least accepted early on, Darwin’s theory of natural selection and plotted what is now known as the Wallace Line, which separates the two ecologically distinct zones of Asia and Australia.

Contemporary readers will probably wince at Wallace’s “kill and collect” approach to studying exotic birds and mammals and abhor his characteristically Victorian racist generalisations about the physical and moral characteristics of the Asian people he encountered. Nevertheless, his work is worth reading. Wallace was an intrepid adventurer intent on studying creatures in far-flung lands, and his fascination with the wonders of the natural world continues to inspire joy.

See below to find out what you need to know to decide whether you should read The Annotated Malay Archipelago, or what you should know about it even if you never do!

Mediating Islam guest post by Janet Steele

Janet Steele is associate professor of media and public affairs, and international affairs, at George Washington University, USA. She is the author of Email dari Amerika (Email from America) and Wars Within: The Story of Tempo, an Independent Magazine in Soeharto's Indonesia. She has just brought out Mediating Islam: Cosmopolitan Journalisms in Muslim Southeast Asia.

Mediating Islam asks: what is Islamic journalism? It examines day-to-day journalism as practiced by Muslim professionals at five exemplary news organisations in Malaysia and Indonesia.  At Sabili, established as an underground publication, journalists are hired for their ability at dakwah, or Islamic propagation. At Tempo, a news magazine banned during the Soeharto regime, the journalists do not talk much about sharia law; although many are pious and see their work as a manifestation of worship, the Islam they practice is often viewed as progressive or even liberal. At Harakah reporters support an Islamic political party, while at Republika they practice a "journalism of the Prophet." Secular news organisations, too, such as Malaysiakini, employ Muslim journalists.

In her guest post for Asian Books Blog, Janet talks about the generosity of her sources in the world of Islamic journalism, in the years leading up to the recent Malaysian general election.

Read Indonesian literature! by Claudia Landini

Claudia Landini has just returned to her native Italy after spending 30 years as an expat, most recently in Jakarta.  She here gives a personal account of her encounters with Indonesian literature.

500 words from David Nesbit

500 words from is an occasional series in which novelists talk about their new novels. David Nesbit has just published his debut novel Twilight in Kuta.

David Nesbit is a British expat living and working in Indonesia. He has previously written short stories and non-fiction pieces on the country.

Twilight in Kuta looks beneath the tourist brochures to explore love and lies in paradise. When young British tourist Neil meets Indonesian girl Yossy on Kuta beach and decides to settle permanently in Bali he knows his life is about to change forever. But will the change be for better or worse? As cracks start to appear in his relationship, he is forced to re-evaluate all he holds dear. His and Yossy’s stories intertwine with those of a mixed-race schoolgirl, a Javanese ex-soldier, and a village girl desperate for love. The various narrators offer different interpretations of the events that unfold.

So, over to David…

Backlist books: The Fugitive by Pramoedya Ananta Toer (Pramudya Ananta Tur)

Backlist books is a column by Lucy Day Werts that focuses on enduring, important works from or about Asia.

This post is about The Fugitive, a novel about one of the leaders of a failed Indonesian rebellion against the Japanese near the end of the Second World War. It is the first novel of an Indonesian nationalist who went on to become the country’s best-known novelist despite spending a considerable fraction of his life behind bars for expressing his political views.

This 171-page novel was written while the author was in a Dutch prison camp and published in Indonesia in 1950. The version I read, the 1990 English translation by Willem Samuels, now seems to be out of print, as is the 1975 English translation by Harry Aveling. The author’s better-known Buru Quartet is still available in English.

See below to find out what you need to know to decide whether you should read The Fugitive, or what you should know about it even if you never do!

500 words from Nigel Barley

500 words from is an occasional series in which writers talk about their newly-published books.

Nigel Barley is a British anthropologist and novelist who has written extensively about Southeast Asia, particularly about Indonesia.

Snow Over Surabaya is a fictionalised account of the life of Muriel Stewart Walker, originally from Glasgow. Under a multitude of different names, including, Surabaya Sue, this self-proclaimed Hollywood scriptwriter joined the struggle for Indonesian independence after the Second World War, and broadcast its revolutionary message to the world on Rebel Radio. She undertook shady business to help finance the new Republic and experienced battle in the November 1945 British attack on Surabaya that some have seen as a war crime. She went on to become an intimate of revolutionary leaders including Bung Tomo and Soekarno, and lived to see Indonesia become a free nation.

Surabaya Sue is virtually unknown in the West and, even in Indonesia, there have always been doubts about her version of events. Snow Over Surabaya embraces doubt, and brings a spirited account of her adventures to a wide readership.

So, over to Nigel…

Books come to writers in lots of ways – taking shelter from the rain, one day, in Singapore cathedral or a snotty letter from an insurance company.  Some have come from other writers.  Island of Demons, my novel about the artist Walter Spies, was born of a lunch with Tash Aw who wanted to find out about Margaret Mead for his Maps of an Invisible World. Meanwhile, Snow Over Surabaya was conceived in a Balinese restaurant and literary salon, called Biku, over a very ex-pat tea with writer Tim Hannigan.  Both of us had produced a biography of Stamford Raffles but with a different take on the man.  I knew Tim must be thoroughly evil to disagree with me on the subject but we were brought together and discovered that we got on like a house on fire. Someone had suggested the subject of Muriel Stewart Walker to him but he hadn’t got along with it. "You do it," he said. "Right up your alley." As he said it, I knew he was right. By the end of tea, I’d written the first paragraph in my head.  That makes a book real.

Muriel was born in Glasgow at the very end of the nineteenth century and she lived almost to the end of the twentieth.  Along the way, she took many names, Mrs. Pearson, Manxi, Surabaya Sue, K’tut Tantri.  She claimed to have worked in the Golden Age of Hollywood, seen a film that made her fall in love with Bali and created the first luxury hotel there.  She lived through the Japanese occupation of Indonesia in World War Two, the struggle for independence, the Battle of Surabaya, knew all the revolutionary leaders, did propaganda broadcasts and smuggled guns, money and – probably – drugs, to help the infant republic.

All this, emerges from her autobiography, Revolt in Paradise (1960).  But Muriel was also a fantasist, spinning a web of romance about herself so that the book consists more of careful omissions and wild inventions than facts.  She has been constantly rediscovered by believers and the sceptical, both in Indonesia – where she is part of official history – and in the West but remains highly controversial.

Snow Over Surabaya starts with what we know she must have seen and experienced, simply from being who and where she was, and unchains her from her prudery and self-censorship, to reveal the feisty, ego-centric survivor she became.  There can be no doubt that she was totally committed to the cause of Indonesian freedom but that didn’t prevent her spying for the British and Americans as well.  Since she did that for money, in her world, it didn’t count.  And it is her indestructibility that allows a book set in a time of war, famine, and atrocity, but high ideals, to be seen as funny and life-affirming. Muriel is flawed, often terrible, and sees the world as centred about herself. She died still dreaming that one day someone would make a Hollywood movie about her life as a romantic heroine. It would make a good one.

Details: Snow Over Surabaya is published by Monsoon, available in paperback and eBook, priced in local currencies.

Indonesian emerging voices at Ubud

The Yayasan Mudra Swari Saraswati, a not-for-profit organisation with the mission of improving the lives of young Indonesians through literature and the arts, has announced that after after a two-year hiatus their emerging voices programme, a free, four-day event celebrating young writers, filmmakers and artists from across the Indonesian archipelago, will again be held alongside the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival, which this year runs from 26-29 October.

Highlights of Ubud Writers and Readers Festival 2016 By Lucía Damacela

The thirteenth edition of the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, one of Southeast Asia’s leading literary events, concluded this October 30^th. Over five days, around 170 authors, artists and performers from more than 20 countries took centre stage, the largest contingent being from Indonesia and Australia.

500 words from Mike Stoner

500 words from...is a series of guest posts from authors writing about Asia, or published by Asia-based, or Asia-focused, publishing houses, in which they talk about their latest books. Here UK-based Mike Stoner talks about his novel Jalan Jalan, set in Indonesia. He initially self-published, but after Jalan Jalan was noticed by the prestigious UK newspaper, the Guardian, and awarded its monthly prize for the best self-published novel, it was picked up by the conventional publisher, Tuttle, which specialises in books linking East and West.

500 Words From Tim Hannigan

500 Words From...is a series of guest posts from authors writing about Asia, published by Asia-based, or Asia-focussed, publishing houses, in which they talk about their latest books. Here UK-based Tim Hannigan talks about A Brief History of Indonesia: Sultans, Spices, and Tsunamis: The Incredible Story of Southeast Asia's Largest Nation, published by Tuttle, a company specialising in books that build bridges between East and West.

Ubud Censorship / Upcoming Festivals

The Ubud Writers & Readers Festival starts today, and runs through until November 1. The start of the Festival has been marred by censorship. This year is the 50^th anniversary of communist repression and killings in Indonesia, in 1965. Ubud Writers & Readers Festival had planned to mark the anniversary – but the authorities had other ideas.

Authors at Ubud

Ubud Writers & Readers Festival, which runs this year from 28 October until November 1, has announced some of the authors, artists and thinkers who will attend.  More names will follow in August, but for the now, this is the list:

Questions & Answers: Ubud Writers Group

Raelee Chapman talks to Steve Castley, of the Ubud Writers Group. Steve has self-published two books, Through My Eyes: Adventures in Bali, in 2010 and A taste of Bali: stories and poems, in collaboration with Julie Silvester, in 2011. He is currently working on a gay romance called Nothing is Forever, and also a memoir called Stuffy's Story: 3 Mums, 6 Years.

How long has your writers group been running? When and why was it formed?

The Ubud Writers Group was founded on the 16th September 2008 and has grown in strength ever since.

Our group has been operating for nearly 8 years now and for me it is a highlight of my fortnight. I know this is also true for the other members.

In the fledgling years, we were hobby writers, scared to share our writing, fearful of having our egos bruised. But our group was set up to encourage writing and writers and our members have never lost sight of that goal.

We trust each other and are sensitive to the way we give feedback. Each one of us has evolved as a writer and the Ubud Writers’ Group can take some credit for this. We are a group that inspires writers and writing.

Writers’ Groups are worth seeking out. I doubt that any two operate in the same way, but they are made up of like-minded people who love to read and write.