Eka Kurniawan, Beauty is a Wound (Melbourne, Text, 2015. 498 pages). Translated into English by Annie Tucker.
Eka Kurniawan’s novel was first published in 2002, and it
was only thanks to the tenacious effort by the translator, Anne Tucker, that
this epic Indonesian saga about a cursed female dynasty finally became
available to English-language readers.
The novel occasionally feels more like a series of tales
joined by a common thread, which in this case is Dewi Ayu, the fiercely
independent woman whose resurrection after twenty-one (yes, 21!) years of her
death is narrated in the first chapter. This is a book that has almost everything:
love, sex, violence, rape, torture both physical and psychological, incestuous
relationships, politics, folklore, religion, magic, ghosts, myths. The list could
go on and on.
Dewi Ayu is born just a few years before the Japanese
Imperial Army invades colonial Batavia and subjugates the local population
while their Dutch masters flee the island of Java. Her story of survival during
imprisonment in a camp and forceful prostitution for the Japanese officers is
an amazing one, and Kurniawan spares us no detail. Thanks to her Weltanschauung, her cheery yet
fatalistic view of life around her, Dewi Ayu triumphs over the war, the
Japanese and the despotic patriarchal men in authority once independence is
declared for Indonesia.
She gives birth to three daughters, Alamanda, Maya Dewi and
Adinda. They are all beauties and they will be, just like their mother, lusted
after by various men. Alamanda’s beauty, legendary, creates the profound
antagonism between Shodancho, a military officer with a penchant for breeding
fierce dogs, and Kliwon, an idealistic youth who ends up becoming the local
Communist leader. Shodancho takes up the task of massacring Communists with
gusto, only to have his by then wife Alamanda begging for Kliwon’s life. She
will promise her love to Shodancho (who had raped her before and during their
marriage) if Kliwon is allowed to live.
And he does indeed remain alive. However, he is exiled,
tortured, humiliated and degraded beyond what is tolerable on an island called
Buru (the very island where Suharto kept thousands of political prisoners
during his regime).
Most of the novel is set in a fictional town called
Halimunda, surrounded by jungle and mountains to the north and the ocean to the
sea. Dewi Ayu, the grandchild of Dutch plantation owners, is initially raised
as a privileged mixed-race girl, but the advent of war will put an end to her
wealth and her liberty. Given her legendary beauty and no less fabulous
love-making skills, she will manage to remain self-reliant and powerful in her
own way. She is by far the most powerfully-depicted character, and her life
story, together with her three daughters’ life stories, combine to create a
richly imaginative and humorous epic. By contrast, male characters seem rather flat
in their unwavering adherence to violence or their indecision.
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| Author Eka Kurniawan at the 2017 Goteborg Book Fair. Photograph: Peter Norrthon. |
Annie Tucker’s translation is a true gift to 21st-century
literature. Bearing in mind that Beauty
is a Wound was first published in 2002, two years before Bolaño’s 2666, we need ask ourselves if it is just
mere coincidence that two works by two writers who had never heard about (let
alone read) each other have much in common. The world of Kurniawan’s novel is
one where the beauty of women is a burden, almost a curse, to them. The
violence men direct at them echoes the brutality Bolaño was denouncing in
Mexico.
A great work of literature. Highly recommended.
