Goodreads Monday is a weekly meme that was started by @Lauren’s Page Turners. This meme is quite easy to follow – just randomly pick a book from your to-be-read list and give the reasons why you want to read it. It is that simple.

This week’s book:

Beauty is a Wound by Eka Kurniawan

Blurb from Goodreads

The epic novel Beauty Is a Wound combines history, satire, family tragedy, legend, humor, and romance in a sweeping polyphony. The beautiful Indo prostitute Dewi Ayu and her four daughters are beset by incest, murder, bestiality, rape, insanity, monstrosity, and the often vengeful undead. Kurniawan’s gleefully grotesque hyperbole functions as a scathing critique of his young nation’s troubled past: the rapacious offhand greed of colonialism; the chaotic struggle for independence; the 1965 mass murders of perhaps a million “Communists,” followed by three decades of Suharto’s despotic rule.

Beauty Is a Wound astonishes from its opening line: “One afternoon on a weekend in May, Dewi Ayu rose from her grave after being dead for twenty-one years…” Drawing on local sources—folk tales and the all-night shadow puppet plays, with their bawdy wit and epic scope—and inspired by Melville and Gogol, Kurniawan’s distinctive voice brings something luscious yet astringent to contemporary literature.

Why I Want To Read It

It’s the dreaded Monday again! But on a brighter side, it means that a new week has started, a new week to do things we wanted to do. It is the promise for better things to come. It’s the first day of the week and it is just right to start with some positive energy! I hope everyone is enjoying their own Mondays.

To kick off the week, I am posting a new Goodreads Monday update. For this week’s edition I am featuring a work by a writer from a neighboring country, Indonesia. It was through an online bookseller that I have first encountered Eka Kurniawan. I tried reserving some of his works but other fellow readers were quicker in typing. With my curiosity was piqued, I resolved to add him to my growing list of writers I’d like to read. Just last week, I managed to purchase one of his works, Beauty is a Wound, online.

I am always excited reading the works of writers from our neighbors. I’ve already read the works of Singaporean, Vietnamese and Thai writers but not once did I read the works of an Indonesian writer. Reading the blurb around Beauty is a Wound, my interest is further piqued. First off, it is a family saga, a genre that I always enjoy. Secondly, it sounds like a dynamic narrative for it incorporates elements of satire, history, humor, romance, and local folklore. I think I will be in for a treat. I am thinking of including the book in my 2021 Top 21 Reading List. I hope that it won’t disappoint.

How about you fellow reader, what book do you want to read? I hope you can share it in the comment box. For now, happy reading! Have a great week ahead!