Equal parts, crude, sad and
deranged, Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash, the third book to be
translated into English by Indonesian author Eka Kurniawan is really the
perfect book to be reading while in the daze of the headiest of head colds. It
is a strange swift journey severed into small, digestible tidbits that switch
perspectives and time periods, its themes are hard to put a finger on (pun
intended), but boy is it a fun book to read. This novel is many things: an
assault on good taste, the idea of love and the quest for manhood, but above
all else, it is entertaining, and even though these past few days, with sleep
in the single digits, finishing this book as quickly as I did was not as hard
as I thought it was going to be. The sad sack loser at the center of this novel
is Ajo Kawir, who had the starts of the book is like most young boys living in
the slums West Java. He craves sex and along with his friend Gecko, seeks it
out whenever he can. It is only after he is witness to a gang rape of the town’s
female unto does he become impotent, and with that comes a bubbling rage and a
need to fight. Just as he is finding something resembling happiness in the form
of Iteung, a female bodyguard, he comes into the crosshairs of feared gangster
Tiger, the payoff of which is totally unexpected and leads to the events ten
years later where Ajo, now a truck driver, talks to his impotent member (called
“Bird”) and coaches a younger driver as he fights his own battle with a man
named after an animal. It is a fast-paced fun story that reminded me of the
gutter poetry Pedro Juan Gutierrez and the brutal cynicism of Leonardo
Sciascia, right down to the downbeat, yet funny ending. This is a wild ride,
one others might deem shallow, but will be hard pressed to deny its audacious
nature.
Rating: 4/5
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