Overview
Told in short, cinematic bursts, Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash is gloriously pulpy. Ajo Kawir, a lower-class Javanese teenage boy excited about sex, likes to spy on fellow villagers in flagrante, but one night he ends up witnessing the savage rape of a beautiful crazy woman by two policemen. Deeply traumatized, he becomes impotent. His efforts to get his virility back all fail, and Ajo Kawir turns to fighting as a way to vent his frustrations. He gets such a fearsome reputation as a brawler that he is hired to kill a thug named The Tiger, but instead Ajo Kawir falls in love with Iteung, a gorgeous female bodyguard who works for the local mafia. Alas, the course of true love never did run smooth...Fast-forward a decade. Now a truck driver, Ajo Kawir has reached a new equanimity, thinking that his penis may be trying to teach him a lesson and even consulting it in many situations as if it were his guru-love may yet triumph. Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash shows Eka Kurniawan in a gritty, comic, pungent mode that fans of Quentin Tarantino will appreciate. But even with its liberal peppering of fights, high-speed car chases, and ladies heaving with desire, the novel continues to explore Kurniawan's familiar themes of female agency in a violent male world dominated by petty criminals and a corrupt police state.
Full Product Details
Author: Eka Kurniawan ,
Annie Tucker (UCLA)
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Imprint: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Dimensions:
Width: 14.00cm
, Height: 1.80cm
, Length: 20.30cm
Weight: 0.239kg
ISBN: 9780811225649
ISBN 10: 081122564
Pages: 216
Publication Date: 11 July 2017
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: To order
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.
Reviews
In terms of the literary novel, the year's most stirring revelation is Eka Kurniawan. -- Jonathon Sturgeon - Flavorwire An unforgettable, all-encompassing epic of Indonesian history, magic, and murder-every detail seems essential to depicting Indonesia's tragic past. Upon finishing the book, the reader will have the sense of encountering not just the history of Indonesia but its soul and spirit. This is an astounding, momentous book. -- Gabe Habash - Publishers Weekly An arresting portrait of Indonesia's struggle for nationhood, delights in obscenity: no topic is spared from its bloodthirsty brand of satire. -- The New Yorker Powerful engine of storytelling-an awesome achievement. -- The San Francisco Chronicle
"""In terms of the literary novel, the year's most stirring revelation is Eka Kurniawan."" -- Jonathon Sturgeon - Flavorwire ""An unforgettable, all-encompassing epic of Indonesian history, magic, and murder-every detail seems essential to depicting Indonesia's tragic past. Upon finishing the book, the reader will have the sense of encountering not just the history of Indonesia but its soul and spirit. This is an astounding, momentous book."" -- Gabe Habash - Publishers Weekly ""An arresting portrait of Indonesia's struggle for nationhood, delights in obscenity: no topic is spared from its bloodthirsty brand of satire."" -- The New Yorker ""Powerful engine of storytelling-an awesome achievement."" -- The San Francisco Chronicle"
Author Information
The internationally acclaimed author of Beauty Is a Wound and Man Tiger, Eka Kurniawan was born in West Java in 1975, the day that the little ex-Portuguese colony East Timor declared its sovereign independence. Annie Tucker won a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Award for her Eka Kurniawan translation.
