Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Our Little Rainbow Warriors

The Rainbow Troops by Andrea Hirata

by Leave a Comment

The Rainbow Troops (Laskar Pelangi) was first published about 20 years ago in Indonesia, where it soon became an absolute bestseller. The book, very loosely based on Andrea Hirata’s own childhood, is set on Belitong Island, where the people are poor, but the surrounds are rich in tin. Most children in the region struggle to obtain an education, but the young Malay boy Ikal and his friends do have one option open to them; a small Muhammadiya (Islamic) school run by an early teacher, Pak […]

The Word ‘Turbulent’ Is Bearing a Lot of Weight Here

Bomb Season in Jakarta: A personal account of a turbulent period in Australian diplomacy by Grant Dooley

by Leave a Comment

This is yet another book I’ve discovered via listening to ABC’s Conversations.  The subtitle of Bomb Season in Jakarta is A personal account of a turbulent period in Australian diplomacy, and Grant Dooley is not kidding when he writes this. Back in 2004, Dooley and his family had moved to Indonesia to start a three year stint working at the Australian Embassy in Jakarta. This was a few years after the 1999 East Timorese crisis and only two years after the 2002 Bali Bombings, Indonesia’s […]

Perang Kemerdekaan Indonesia.

Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World by David van Reybrouck

by 1 Comment

After making Majaphait one of the last reads of last years Cannonball Read, I decided to keep with my South East Asian history roll with Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World by David van Reybrouck. As you can see, I’m also continuing with my long standard interest in Australia’s immediate northern neighbor. It just boggles the mind that such a large, diverse country has such a small impact on the public consciousness. I think a lot of this has to do with […]

The Hindu-Buddhist Empire You’ve Never Heard Of.

Majapahit: Intrigue, Betrayal and War in Indonesia's Greatest Empire by Herald van der Linde

by Leave a Comment

I mentioned this one in the best and worst books round up at the end of the year so now I feel obliged to post a review before we actually hit the end of the year. While it’s often said that history is written by the victors, I think  reality is a little more complex than that. A great empire celebrated in one era may fade into obscurity in the next. Geopolitical shifts can suppress the stories of past triumphs, and without visible monuments or […]

“Oh wretched little one—just like evildoers, the wretched don’t die easy.”

Beauty is a Wound by Eka Kurniawan

by Leave a Comment

From the very first page: “One afternoon on a weekend in March, Dewi Ayu rose from her grave after being dead for twenty-one years. A shepherd boy, awakened from his nap under a frangipani tree, peed in his shorts and screamed, and his four sheep ran off haphazardly in between stones and wooden grave markers as if a tiger had been thrown into their midst. It all started with a noise coming from an old gravesite with an unmarked tombstone covered in knee-high grass, but […]

The past is never past

Beauty is a Wound: A Novel by Eka Kurniawan

by 2 Comments

Cbr15bingo Asia & Oceania I have never before read a novel quite like Beauty is a Wound. It is a combination of history, myth, magic, spiritualism, violence and absurdity. Set in the fictional Indonesian town Halimunda, Beauty is a Wound is the story of three generations of a family and of Indonesia under Dutch colonialism, Japanese occupation, and the political strife that followed WWII. It is about the greed and selfishness that allows individuals and nations to dominate, use and abuse the objects of their […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo