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Indonesian Literature vs. New Order Orthodoxy: The Aftermath of 1965-1966. By ANNA-GRETA NILSSON HOADLEY. Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2005. 159 pp. £36 (cloth).
Indonesian literature has produced a number of memorable works recounting the events of 1965-66 and the effects of their aftermath on those whom the New Order regime stigmatized by declaring them to have been involved. Umar Kayam's novellas of the 1970s and Ahmad Tohari's Ronggeng trilogy of the 1980s are perhaps the best known. These were followed by Pramoedya Ananta Toer's Buru memoirs, The Mute's Soliloquy (1995-97) and Putu Oka Sukanta's semiautobiographical novel, Weaving a Fabric of Dignity (1999). Anna-Greta Nilsson Hoadley has taken these works, along with a number of others, and made them the basis of an attempt to construct an alternative to the official history of this period as propagated by the New Order.
Nilsson Hoadley's attempt is welcome, since the historical legacy of these events is still a matter of grave contention within Indonesia, and since this important theme has only infrequently been raised in Indonesian literary studies (most notable in this regard is Foulcher's 1990 chapter in The Indonesian Killings 1965-1966, edited by Robert Cribb). Yet never has an attempt been made to gather all the literary works touching on these events together in one single study....