People from Bloomington

In the 197s, Budi Darma – one of Indonesia’s most acclaimed writers – lived as a student in Bloomington, Indiana. His experiences formed the basis for the renowed short story collection, The People from Bloomington: a portrait of small-town America that offers an incisive view of the West and the people that inhabit it. In Darma’s America, apartment blocks and gasping attic rooms shadow overgrown gardens, empty streets and distances traversable only by car. His stories circle the lonely, the unkempt, and the odd: mysterious old men and gruesomely sick poets, children with strange proportions and women waiting for letters that never arrive. Tense, quietly surreal and always morbidly funny, The People from Bloomington is one of the great works of twentieth-century Indonesian literature.