Vengeance is mine, all others pay cash

Paperback, 209 pages

English language

Published Feb. 1, 2017

ISBN:: 978-0-8112-2564-9
OCLC Number:: 961001993

(1 review)

"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 …

"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--and 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"--

1 edition

dorsalfin reviewed Vengeance is mine, all others pay cash by Eka Kurniawan

Vengeance is mine, all others pay cash

4 stars

This a story about violence and masculine trauma and impotence. About the allure of the open road to pull us out of the restricting communities where we grow up. About being too fucking stupid and stubborn to be with the person we love.

You make mistakes when you are young. When you get older you think you have gotten wiser but in fact you're just as dumb, you're just a little better at hiding it. Maybe you can talk someone out of making the same mistake you did, but probably not. You misunderstand what they want, they lie to you about what they can do.

None of this gets tied up neatly, no one achieves integration or resolution or happiness.

This book is vicious and brutal, but extremely funny. The kind of book where an unsuspecting teenager might start to idolize the characters for acting tough or being cool, but …

This a story about violence and masculine trauma and impotence. About the allure of the open road to pull us out of the restricting communities where we grow up. About being too fucking stupid and stubborn to be with the person we love.

You make mistakes when you are young. When you get older you think you have gotten wiser but in fact you're just as dumb, you're just a little better at hiding it. Maybe you can talk someone out of making the same mistake you did, but probably not. You misunderstand what they want, they lie to you about what they can do.

None of this gets tied up neatly, no one achieves integration or resolution or happiness.

This book is vicious and brutal, but extremely funny. The kind of book where an unsuspecting teenager might start to idolize the characters for acting tough or being cool, but this hits you completely over the head with how shitty and pathetic they are.

I enjoyed it quite a lot.

Subjects

Impotence
Rape
Fiction

Places

Indonesia