"“What a pleasure to see Laksmi Pamuntjak’s poems and prose texts in one generous volume that bears witness to her versatility and dexterity in both those genres, long before her name became internationally known for her splendid fi rst novel. Her multivocal stories intertwine with the lush, layered textures of art and music, and her elliptical, deft poems observe with a clear eye the cityscapes of our own restless lives, whether in Jakarta or London, New York or Berlin.” —Aamer ...

The Question of Red tells the story of two lovers, Amba and Bhisma, driven apart by one of the bloodiest Communist purges in the 20th century the massacres that took place in Indonesia between 1965 and 1968 in which some 1 million people were killed. From rural Java and Yogyakarta to the prison camps of Buru Island, where some 12,000 alleged Communists were incarcerated without trial during the Suharto administration, the lives of the central characters interpret the Mahabharata that timeless ...