Diva is an improbably beautiful and intelligent model, who also works as a high-class call girl. Later, a third important character is introduced. It’s love at first sight, but the fact that she is already married rather complicates matters, with the ensuing affair changing both their lives for the better (both experience more happiness than they had previously imagined possible) and worse (the complications resulting from their need to hide the relationship). Ferré (the ‘knight’), a hyper-successful businessman, meets and falls in love with Rana, a magazine reporter. Knowles does want to attempt that, I’d be very happy to check it out!).īeyond the frame of the two men’s story, Supernova’s main focus is life in Jakarta.
From the information given in the biography at the end of the book, it’s akin to Beyoncé taking up literary fiction… The book is an ambitious attempt to meld social commentary, quantum physics and meta-fiction, all in just over 200 pages (and if Ms. Supernova is the first in a planned series of six books (as far as I’m aware, three have been released in Indonesian so far UPDATE: comments below say five so far with the last due next year), and one of the more interesting facts about the project is Lestari’s past as a pop star. The work goes along nicely, but as the story develops, Ruben and Dhimas slowly start to have their doubts as to how their project is progressing are they really writing the story, or is it actually writing them?
The story is to look at the people of Jakarta and is based on the folktale ‘The Knight, the Princess and the Falling Star’, showing the pressures of modern society and how we are all interconnected yet unique. They decide to write a story together, one blending Dhimas’ writing skills with Ruben’s vast knowledge of the brain and the world of science (he has since become a ‘quantum psychologist’…). Ruben, a medical student, and Dhimas, a writer, share a drug-fuelled experience at a party, and back in Indonesia ten years later, the men are still in love.
In honour of the event, then, I’ve decided to devote the week to Indonesian fiction, with three reviews of books by Indonesian writers for your pleasure – and here’s the second of my reviews 🙂ĭewi Lestari’s Supernova (translated by Harry Aveling, review copy courtesy of the Lontar Foundation) begins with a meeting between two Indonesian expats in the US. This week sees the latest staging of the Frankfurt Book Fair, and 2015’s guest of honour is Indonesia, a country which is currently a blank on my literary explorers map.
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