The Question of Red

Amba, a teacher's daughter from a small town in Central Java, grows up among old books and leaves home to study, putting off the marriage her parents arranged with the young lecturer Salwa. Working as a translator at a hospital in Kediri, she meets Bhisma, a doctor trained in Leipzig in East Germany, and falls in love with him. Their affair ends abruptly in Yogyakarta amid the events of 30 September 1965: in a raid Bhisma disappears, and Amba is left carrying his child. He is exiled to the prison camp on Buru Island, and when the camp is closed and the prisoners go home, he does not return. In 2006 Amba travels to Buru to find out why.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

494 pages in the original

Genres

Love, Historical, Politics (assigned by AI)

Set in

Indonesia, 1960s–2006

First published

2012 by Gramedia Pustaka Utama

ISBN

9789792288797 (original)

9789792299830 (Gramedia Pustaka Utama, Indonesia)

9781503936430 (AmazonCrossing, United States)