Lampuki

Not many authors tell about Aceh, my place of birth and one of the provinces in Indonesia. Arafat Nur tried to tell a story about his own place, his own people, Aceh. The setting is Aceh during the riot after the falling down of Soeharto era.

From the author narration we could learn how a rebellion can happen. What the reasons behind it and how actually people think about it. As usual the conflict between the government and the rebels cause nothing but long suffering for innocent people. Reading this book is like exploring a history book. Many new facts are revealed and I guess those are mostly factual narration since the author himself lives there, in one of the conflict area.

What I learn so far, the root of all problems there is simply justice. Just like in other conflict areas, e.g. Papua now. Aceh people know that their area is very rich with natural gas and many more but they feel that government has used them up. Instead of enjoying high welfare, they just feel that their lives are getting more and more miserable. Giving justice for all is absolutely not an easy thing to do. Whew.. it seems that my review is getting more serious here.

To wrap it up, this is a different genre of novel. Even the writing style is not common. It has more narration than dialogue. You need patience to digest it. This novel has been awarded by Dewan Kesenian Jakarta 2010 as the winner of novel writing contest.