INDONESIA FOCUS: Q+A Laksmi Pamuntjak

Indonesia is the country of focus at the London Book Fair this year and recently at Frankfurt - to what extent do you think Indonesian literature is finally having it's moment in the spotlight? I cannot say for certain what these one-off ‘spotlights’ on Indonesian literature would mean for Indonesian literature in the long term. But it is an encouraging sign; the relatively short three-and-a-half-year gap between Frankfurt Book Fair (FBF) 2015 and London Book Fair (LBF) 2019 means we are still—or possibly even more—interesting to the publishing industry. And while I wish more Indonesian writers are being translated into English—and translated well—some of us are starting to break through internationally. It always takes one or two to pave the way. For me personally, FBF was a game changer in many ways. Before that we didn’t have the publishing infrastructure necessary with which to promote our literature abroad. We didn’t have literary agents – in fact I only knew of one, and he used to work for my Indonesian publisher Gramedia. It was he who took a chance on the English version of my first novel, Amba/The Question of Red, and brought it to Frankfurt Book Fair in 2013, where the novel was picked up by Ullstein Verlag and published in Germany in 2015, ahead of the FBF. So I was very fortunate. A few months later, I landed a literary agent in New York, through whom I managed to sell world rights to other European markets. Later this year, I signed up with another literary... Continue reading at 'British Council global'

[ British Council global | 2019-02-08 10:06:53 UTC ]

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