Beauty Is a Wound

Originally published in Bahasa Indonesia, Beauty Is a Wound starts with a powerful opening line: “One afternoon on a weekend in May, Dewi Ayu rose from her grave after being dead for twenty-one years…” The epic novel combines history, satire, family tragedy, legend, humour, and romance in the stories of prostitute Dewi Ayu and her four daughters. Beset by incest, murder, bestiality, rape, insanity, monstrosity, and the often vengeful undead, the characters are a vehicle for its author to critique Indonesia’s troubled past, from colonial greed to the oppressive rule under Suharto. The book won both the World Readers’

Award and Best Translated

Book Award in 2016.