Beauty Is a Wound
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Book Overview
The epic novel Beauty Is a Wound combines history, satire, family tragedy, legend, humor, and romance in a sweeping polyphony. The beautiful Indo prostitute Dewi Ayu and her four daughters are beset by incest, murder, bestiality, rape, insanity, monstrosity, and the often vengeful undead. Kurniawan's gleefully grotesque hyperbole functions as a scathing critique of his young nation's troubled past: the rapacious offhand greed of colonialism; the chaotic struggle for independence; the 1965 mass murders of perhaps a million "Communists," followed by three decades of Suharto's despotic rule.
Beauty Is a Wound astonishes from its opening line: One afternoon on a weekend in May, Dewi Ayu rose from her grave after being dead for twenty-one years.... Drawing on local sources--folk tales and the all-night shadow puppet plays, with their bawdy wit and epic scope--and inspired by Melville and Gogol, Kurniawan's distinctive voice brings something luscious yet astringent to contemporary literature.
Beauty Is a Wound astonishes from its opening line: One afternoon on a weekend in May, Dewi Ayu rose from her grave after being dead for twenty-one years.... Drawing on local sources--folk tales and the all-night shadow puppet plays, with their bawdy wit and epic scope--and inspired by Melville and Gogol, Kurniawan's distinctive voice brings something luscious yet astringent to contemporary literature.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:0811223639
ISBN13:9780811223638
Release Date:September 2015
Publisher:New Directions Publishing Corporation
Length:384 Pages
Weight:1.21 lbs.
Dimensions:1.3" x 5.4" x 7.8"
Customer Reviews
1 rating
Read in one sitting on a plane ride
Published by Isabella P , 1 year ago
All I have to say is read it if you haven't. The quality of it will explain itself to you as you read. If you are a fan of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I would strongly recommend this book.
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Published by Ashly Moore Sheldon • April 22, 2025
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