People from Bloomington

People from Bloomington

Summary

In the 1970s, 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.

About the author

Budi Darma

Budi Darma (1937 - 2021) was a novelist, short-story-writer, and literary critic. Budi Darma received several national literary awards and his international honors include the Southeast Asian Writers Award (or S.E.A. Write Award) and the Mastera Literary Award. He held a PhD in English literature from the University of Bloomington, Indiana, and was a professor at the State University of Surabaya.
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