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Eka Kurniawan

Eka Kurniawan was born in Tasikmalaya in 1975 and completed his studies in the Faculty of Philosophy at Gadjah Mada University. He has been described as the “brightest meteorite” in Indonesia’s new literary firmament, the author of two remarkable novels which have brought comparisons to Salman Rushdie, Gabriel García Márquez and Mark Twain; the English translations of these novels were both published in 2015—Man Tiger by Verso Books, and Beauty is a Wound by New Directions in North America and Text Publishing in Australia. Kurniawan has also written movie scripts, a graphic novel, essays on literature and two collections of short stories. He currently resides in Jakarta.
years of life: 28 November 1975 present

Quotes

thewindupbirdhas quotedlast year
Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Indonesia’s grand novelist, composer of stunning short stories and memorable critical essays, spent fourteen years on the remote island prison of Buru without trial
thewindupbirdhas quotedlast year
One of the tasks of the Jogjakarta PRD was stealthily to circulate Pramoedya’s gigantic Buru Tetralogy, composed in the gulag, on the origins and development of nationalism and socialism in Indonesia during the first quarter of the twentieth century.
thewindupbirdhas quotedlast year
Much later, when Eka wrote a short reply to a question about which Indonesian writers impressed him the most, he said he had a melancholy three. The first was Amir Hamzah, Indonesia’s finest poet and a pro-independence aristocrat in Northern Sumatra, executed during the Revolution of 1945–49 by gangsters masquerading as revolutionaries. Second came Pramoedya, and third Widji Tukul, a brave new kind of radical Javanese poet, who was disappeared, probably by the seasoned killers commanded by Lt. General Prabowo, once Suharto’s son-in-law, with maniacal ambitions to become the country’s president. (Fortunately, he was defeated in the national election of 2014 by Djoko Widodo, the much-loved young governor of Jakarta, and the first presidential candidate unsullied by the brutal and corrupt Suharto regime.)
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