“Beauty is a wound” Eka Kurniawan (2002) Review | Mix of history, religions, power, and abuse

🔽 log 🔽
Beauty is a wound
Cantik Itu Luka
Eka Kurniawan, 2002
480 pages
Read in 2024.4
check price on amazon.com

✔ Violent history and society in Indonesia
✔ Mother and daughters strong female 
✔ Spirits, ghost and customs


🔽 Review summary 🔽

★★★★★ The mixture of history and race, religions and politics and power, and living among men abusing all above. Mother's only hope is the ugly, blessed daughter. An epic drama of strong beautiful women. 


🔽 Book review and notes 🔽

It IS a book full of violence, love and curse of the beauty. 
A great storytelling, of drama, an epic, of strong beautiful women who are, as it always happens, cursed by their men.

One day the town's dead prostitute comes back to life see her daughters. 
She cannot leave this life until she sees them, especially the ugly one, who is leading a happy life, because the outer beauty is nothing but a wound, wound that cannot be healed.

Survived the colonial past and the invasions, their story and history are so unique that this book could have only emerged from Indonesia. 
The mixture of history and race, religions and politics and power, and abuse of all above. Full of stories, my first Indonesian novel, and an epic.

🔽 Where to buy 🔽

●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●

Beauty Is a Wound

●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Beauty is a Wound (Pushkin Press Classics)

●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●

La bellezza è una ferita (Italiano)