The Longing

"This novel is both an act of remembrance and resistance. A necessary novel for our time." --Okky Madasari, Indonesian novelist and sociologist A story of love, loss, turbulence, and mended relationships from the eyes of a young woman who traces her family history from the 1950s to the 2010s in East Java, Indonesia. Malang, East Java, Indonesia. 1950s. Ah Lam is married off to Cheng Lei, a wealthy merchant's son, but finds herself facing an abusive husband, while raising children and running a small restaurant to make ends meet--all this, during the extreme political and economic hardship of 1965-66. In the authoritarian New Order regime of the 1970s, her daughter Ming Zhu befriends a wealthy Javanese Muslim entrepreneur family and falls for Arya--an aspiring scholar--whom she later marries against her parents' wishes. They have twins, Fajar and Dido, before divorcing. Growing up during the Reformasi era, and amid the May 1998 riots, Dido, a Peranakan woman, grapples with gender and cultural challenges. Torn between her hybrid ethnicity and cultural roots, she becomes a documentary filmmaker to explore the political upheaval and her own identity. As Indonesia unravels even further, how will these three generations of women confront intergenerational trauma and their family's troubled past?