Bestselling Indonesian Author Leila S Chudori at Asia Bookroom

Bestselling Indonesian Author Leila S. Chudori Speaks at Asia Bookroom

Introduction by Emeritus Professor Virginia Matheson

Join us for a very special Saturday afternoon when Indonesian author Leila S. Chudori talks about her bestselling novel, Home or as the Indonesian edition is titled, Pulang.

Leila S.Chudori, is an Indonesian author who has written short stories since a young age, a best-selling novel, and a television series. She is considered one of Indonesia’s boldest story-tellers; her style is unconventional and her themes include such taboo subjects as state absolutism, chauvinism and the hypocrisy of public mores. Both her style and themes mark her as an exceptional figure in the Indonesian literary scene.

Leila Chudori spent six years doing research for Home, interviewing political exiles Oemar Said and Sobron Aidit and many former political prisoners in Jakarta, including journalist-poet Amarzan Loebis and activist Djoko Sri Moeljono, who had been imprisoned on the infamous Buru Island under the Soeharto military regime. Home tells a saga encompassing two generations of people.

The novel begins with the tale of four Indonesian journalists – Dimas Suryo, Nugroho, Risyaf and Tjai, who are banned from returning to their homeland following the aftermath of the Communist purge in Indonesia in 1965. While Dimas’ friends and family members are slaughtered or tortured for information in Indonesia, the four friends move from country to country seeking political asylum, finally landing in France and eking out a living by opening the Indonesian eatery Restoran Tanah Air (based on an actual “Restoran Indonesia” on Rue de Vaugirard, Paris, founded by the late Oemar Said, and writer Sobron Aidit, younger brother of Indonesian Communist party leader D.N. Aidit and J .J. Kusni). After meeting Vivienne Deveraux on the sidelines of the student movement in May 1968, Dimas, having received a letter telling him of the execution of Hananto Prawiro, their close friend, starts telling Vivienne about his past. One half of the book tells the story of Dimas’ and Vivienne’s daughter, Lintang Utara, who decides to visit Indonesia in 1998 to make a documentary on the lives of banished Indonesians as part of her final project as a student at Sorbonne University. Things are chaotic politically yet exciting for a documentary film-maker. Lintang meets Segara Alam, the son of Hananto Prawiro, who helps her to interview families of Indonesian 1965 political activists who had suffered under the Soeharto regime. Through Lintang’s eyes and lens, readers get a portrayal of the downfall of Soeharto’s New Order.

Pulang (the Indonesian language title) was received in Indonesia very positively by critics and readers alike and has been reprinted many times. In 2013 Pulang won Khatulistiwa Literary Award in Indonesia.

Virginia Matheson Hooker is Professor Emeritus and Fellow in the Dept of Political & Social Change, College of Asia and the Pacific, at The Australian National University. She retired as Professor of Indonesian and Malay in the Faculty of Asian Studies, the Australian National University in January 2007. Her research has focussed on Islam in Southeast Asia, literature and social change in Malaysia and Indonesia, and Indonesian political culture. Her most recent book, co-edited with Dr Greg Fealy, is an award-winning sourcebook on contemporary Islam in Southeast Asia.