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Eka Kurniawan: Beauty is a wound (2015) 4 stars

"The English-language debut of Indonesia's greatest young novelist, Eka Kurniawan: "without a doubt the most …

Review of 'Beauty is a wound' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I wish I could give it a 3.5, because I'm still not sure how much I liked it. The story is woven together well. I definitely wanted to know what happened. And I feel like it is one of those books that gets closer to the truth of history even though it is outrageously fiction. But it is veeeerry rapey. It is sometimes hard to tell whether the author is 100% calling out the misogyny or just accepting it. The characters are quirky and vile and sometimes vibrant. But there is nobody who is a human to care about. Which is certainly the point. But also hard to read. I suspect this one will grow on me though. I suspect that whenever some indictment of colonialism, conquest, and desire comes up; I will think about this book.