The Dancer edition by Ahmad Tohari Literature Fiction eBooks
Download As PDF : The Dancer edition by Ahmad Tohari Literature Fiction eBooks 
The Dancer, a trilogy of novels, recounts the tumultuous days of Indonesia in the mid 1960s. In luscious descriptive language, author Ahmad Tohari describes a village community struggling to adapt to a rapidly changing world. The Dancer highlights the lives of Srintil, a dancer, and Rasus, a bewildered young man torn between tradition and political progress. Through their separate experiences, both learn the concepts of shame and sin Rasus after he leaves their home village and journeys into the wider world and Srintil when the outside world finally comes crashing into her remote village. The Dancer gives readers a ground-level view of the political turmoil leading up to and following the abortive coup in 1965.
The Dancer edition by Ahmad Tohari Literature Fiction eBooks
I devoured this novel in a day, then spent the evening pondering over why I hated it so much. I have to give it more than one star, because the author writes from precious, irreplacable experience. If you want to read a novel about what it means to grow up in a traditional pagan village surrounded by magic and spirits, this is the book for you: it was written by someone who really experienced that life growing up, and he offers insider insights that an anthropologist would never be able to grasp. Furthermore, it appears that the author still does believe in witchcraft, as many Javanese do.I think the main reason I disliked this book is because the author is just educated enough to do serious damage to his rich material. The first third of the book is given an unlikely, artificial Freudian gloss. The next third offers an unpleasant equivocating take on Indonesian politics, where the million civilian victims of the 1965 genocide are portrayed as being equally as duped or guilty as their murderers. The final third propounds the author's thesis about humanity generally, a mixture of preachy, condescending humanism and feminism.
Naturally, the story arc is written in a way to push each of these theses, but the story is not *entirely* didactic. It is not quite a straightforward morality play. In fact, the overall way history is illustrated through narrative development is interesting. Rather than assisting my enjoyment of the book, though, this actually increased my irritation quite a bit. The author has talent, and if he hadn't been so intent at waving his intellectual dick around for the Jakarta elites, this could have been a classic on the level of Pramoedya.
The Freudian bits I can laugh off as almost ridiculous in their irrelevance to the period, but the cheap expression of pity for clueless villagers duped by manipulative Communists, and the shallow moralizing about the inadequacies of tradition and religion for the complex needs of modernity, are especially bothersome to me. The author has also made the narrator, who is also the protagonist, omniscient for some reason, creating a bizarre power dynamic between him and the other characters -- this is bad choice, and it is a useful thought experiment when the omniscient paragraphs appear to imagine how much better the story would read if the author had not done this.
As the decades pass, this book will seem increasingly damaged by its author, while Prameodya's genius will live on. 2.5 stars.
Product details
|
Tags : The Dancer - Kindle edition by Ahmad Tohari. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading The Dancer.,ebook,Ahmad Tohari,The Dancer,Typhoon Media Ltd,FICTION General,FICTION Literary
People also read other books :
- Saint John Bosco and His Big Gray Dog edition by Hayley Medeiros Children eBooks
- Ecce Homo The HumanAlien Debate edition by Thomas A Brown Candace Morehouse Religion Spirituality eBooks
- We didn't know any better Poems About life K Bartholomew Books
- Gordon Setter How to Own and Care for Your Gordon Setter edition by Crystal Anderson Crafts Hobbies Home eBooks
- Historia Política del español La creación de una lengua BETA HISPANISMO nº 1 Spanish Edition eBook José del Valle Carlos Pott
The Dancer edition by Ahmad Tohari Literature Fiction eBooks Reviews
This is a well constructed historical narrative played out through fictional characters. Through this technique, Ahmad Tohari has made a difficult period of Indonesia's past accessible.
An intriguing story that captures a history, culture, time and place of early Java. Beautifully written with descriptions of nature interwoven with the engaging and eye-opening tale. I am going to Java shortly and I think what I experienced through this book will remain with me as I travel.
I bought this book because I spent a short time in Indonesia recently. While I was there, I read an article about Ahmad Tohari. He mentioned that this book was controversial because of the way it depicted local village life and the political struggles in the mid 1960s. It appears that practically nothing has been published about this time in Indonesian history, especially in school books. I was also intrigued by the "ronggeng" or village dancer, which is a custom that is no longer practiced - and which some people deny ever truly existed.
Obviously, I read the translated version. I like to read books written about the way of life of the "common people" around the world. I don't expect these books to be a complete description of the people of a region or a country - any more than I would expect the story of a single farmer in Kansas to represent the whole of the US Midwest. This book is not an accurate or complete portrayal of the Indonesian civil strife; it is a story about about village people who were caught up in what was happening around them - regardless of whether they could see or understand the big picture.
Tohari tells the story well. It has a few fantastical elements, which I thought were in keeping with the beliefs of the story's characters. The details of village life are clearly drawn, and the characters have a very human mix of positive and negative traits. He withholds any obvious moral judgement until near the end - I suppose he couldn't resist. For me, that was the weakest part. There were occasional places where the characters' motivations were unclear to me why did Rasus become a devout Muslim? But perhaps that would be more apparent to someone from the same culture, or perhaps I missed the clues in the translated version. I wished for a different ending, but I don't disagree with how Tohari closed the story.
Overall I enjoyed the book and would recommend it. Note that this was originally published as a trilogy; this English translation includes all three of the original books.
I devoured this novel in a day, then spent the evening pondering over why I hated it so much. I have to give it more than one star, because the author writes from precious, irreplacable experience. If you want to read a novel about what it means to grow up in a traditional pagan village surrounded by magic and spirits, this is the book for you it was written by someone who really experienced that life growing up, and he offers insider insights that an anthropologist would never be able to grasp. Furthermore, it appears that the author still does believe in witchcraft, as many Javanese do.
I think the main reason I disliked this book is because the author is just educated enough to do serious damage to his rich material. The first third of the book is given an unlikely, artificial Freudian gloss. The next third offers an unpleasant equivocating take on Indonesian politics, where the million civilian victims of the 1965 genocide are portrayed as being equally as duped or guilty as their murderers. The final third propounds the author's thesis about humanity generally, a mixture of preachy, condescending humanism and feminism.
Naturally, the story arc is written in a way to push each of these theses, but the story is not *entirely* didactic. It is not quite a straightforward morality play. In fact, the overall way history is illustrated through narrative development is interesting. Rather than assisting my enjoyment of the book, though, this actually increased my irritation quite a bit. The author has talent, and if he hadn't been so intent at waving his intellectual dick around for the Jakarta elites, this could have been a classic on the level of Pramoedya.
The Freudian bits I can laugh off as almost ridiculous in their irrelevance to the period, but the cheap expression of pity for clueless villagers duped by manipulative Communists, and the shallow moralizing about the inadequacies of tradition and religion for the complex needs of modernity, are especially bothersome to me. The author has also made the narrator, who is also the protagonist, omniscient for some reason, creating a bizarre power dynamic between him and the other characters -- this is bad choice, and it is a useful thought experiment when the omniscient paragraphs appear to imagine how much better the story would read if the author had not done this.
As the decades pass, this book will seem increasingly damaged by its author, while Prameodya's genius will live on. 2.5 stars.
0 Response to "⋙ [PDF] The Dancer edition by Ahmad Tohari Literature Fiction eBooks"
Post a Comment