Goodreads Monday is a weekly meme started by @Lauren’s Page Turners but is currently hosted by Emily @ Budget Tales Book Blog. This meme is quite easy to follow – just randomly pick a book from your to-be-read list and explain why you want to read it. It is that simple.

This week’s book:

Saman by Ayu Utami 

Blurb from Goodreads

Saman is a story filtered through the lives of its feisty female protagonists and the enigmatic “hero” Saman. It is at o­nce an exposé of the oppression of plantation workers in South Sumatra, a lyrical quest to understand the place of religion and spirituality in contemporary lives, a playful exploration of female sexuality and a story about love in all its guises, while touching o­n all of Indonesia’s extramarital sex, political repression and the relationship between Christians and Muslims.

Saman has taken the Indonesian literary world by storm and sold over 100,000 copies in the Indonesian language, and is now available for the first time in English.

Why I Want To Read It

Happy Monday everyone! Technically, it is already the second day of the week. Regardless, I am cognizant that the first day of the week is not really everyone’s favorite day of the week; or, at least the majority of us. How does one recover from the weekend funk? I do hope that you were able to rest and recover during the weekend. I hope that despite it being a brief respite, it has prepared you for the tough workweek ahead. Here in the Philippines – I am back after a week’s vacation overseas – the heat has been stifling. I sure hope everyone is somewhere comfortable. Further, I hope you had a great start to the workweek, or at least you kicked the ground running. I hope everyone makes it through the week. More importantly, I hope everyone is doing well, in mind, body, and spirit, not only this week but for the rest of the year.

It has also not escaped my attention how time has been flying. We are close to waving goodbye to the fourth month of the year. I hope that April has been kind to everyone. I hope that the year is going great. I hope that 2025 is generous to everyone. If it is going otherwise, I hope the coming months will shower everyone with blessings, good news, and kindness. I hope that 2025 is everyone’s year to be successful and blessed. With the start of the week is a fresh Goodreads Monday update. This weekly blogging meme has, over the years, become a weekly ritual that allows me to feature books I am looking forward to. After immersing myself in the works of East Asian writers for a full quarter, I have transitioned to full Asian literature. As such, I have been featuring works of Asian writers in this month’s Goodreads Monday updates.

This week’s featured book is from my own region, South East Asia; this is after I featured books from South, East, and Central Asia. I have to admit, sadly at that, that South East Asia is a part of the literary world that I rarely explored; this is underlined by the fact that my foray into Philippine literature, my own at that, is not as extensive as my foray into other literatures such as Japanese or even Indian literature. Regardless, I have been redressing this and in the past few years, I have expanded to Indonesian, Vietnamese, Thai, and Malaysian literatures. Speaking of Indonesian literature, my venture into this part of the literary world is still limited. I have, so far, read only the works of Eka Kurniawan. I do, however, want to expand this further; I have already listed Pramoedya Ananta Toer as among the writers I look forward to.

A new name came out today when I encountered Ayu Utami; I was just today years old when I learned about her. Utami, born in Jakarta, first worked as a journalist, a precarious job during the authoritarian regime of Suharto; Toer was also among his prolific critics. When the magazines she worked for were banned by Suharto, Utami continued her journalistic work underground. Among her pieces is a black book on corruption. This certainly makes me look forward to exploring her oeuvre. It was in 1998 when she published her first novel, Saman. It is, from what I understand, is a celebrated literary work, not only in the ambit of Indonesian literature where it earned several accolades but in world literature as a whole.

What piqued my interest in the book is its promising premise. What set the novel apart following its publication was its liberal voice, a deviation in a conservative nation where the female voice is often stymied. It was no surprise learning that the novel, with its explicit language, raised the eyebrows of a naturally conservative society. Nevertheless, it was also its daring that earned it the respect of many a pundit. It is a groundbreaking work. It is for these reasons that I am looking forward to reading the book. For now, I just hope I get to obtain a copy of the book. How about you fellow reader? How was your Monday? What books have you added to your reading list? Do drop it in the comment box. For now, happy Monday and, as always, happy reading!