The Question of Red by Laksmi Pamuntjak: book review

The Question of Red (2016) is set on Buru, the third largest island in the Maluka Islands—the Spice Islands—in Indonesia in the 1960s, and in 2006, ending in 2011. During President Suharto’s administration from 1965 to 1998, the island was a large penal colony for alleged Communist Party sympathizers.

The story begins with Samuel and Amba in Buru in 2006. Amba Kinanti Eilers is 62 years old. She has come all the way from Jakarta to see the love of her life, Bhisma Rashad, but he is dead. Samuel Lawerissa is a 40 year old friend she meets on the ship on its way to Buru Island, where he spent his childhood in the 1960s.

Amba was named after a tragic mythological princess (‘my name ended the battle of all battles’)—a story she has tried to rewrite throughout her life: ‘history is like a long, twisted joke. You never know when the punchline will come.’

Now in Buru, her mind returns to Jakarta in the 1950s when she first met her husband Bhisma, a refined doctor trained in Europe, and his rival in love, Salwani Munir, who said he would protect her forever. She reflects on her choice of lovers: Bhisma and Salwa. Whatever happened to Salwa—the university teacher and a man of quiet confidence and humility?

The conflict in October 1965 altered everyone’s lives, especially for Amba and Bhisma when the Army stormed the university. And then there was a third man: ‘When a woman wavers between two men—the one she didn’t get and the one who didn’t get her—she usually encounters a third.’

This is an interesting tale of politics and love, built upon five central characters. Well-written and compelling to the end.

MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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