Auteur
Eka Kurniawan was born in Tasikmalaya, Indonesia in 1975. He studied philosophy at Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta and has since published several novels and short stories. He was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2016 and his books have been translated into 27 languages. His highly acclaimed, epic work of magical realism Beauty is a Wound is also available from Pushkin Press.

Texte du rabat

A thrilling, comic and gritty new novel from this high-acclaimed Indonesian author, it is peppered with high-speed car chases, fights, corruption and desire.

Résumé

Told in short, cinematic bursts, Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash is gloriously pulpy. Ajo Kawir, a sex-obsessed lower-class Javanese teenage boy, likes to spy on fellow villagers in flagrante, but one night he ends up witnessing the savage rape of a beautiful, crazy woman by two policemen. Deeply traumatized, he becomes impotent. His efforts to get his virility back all fail, and Ajo Kawir turns to fighting as a way to vent his frustrations. He gets such a fearsome reputation as a brawler that he is hired to kill a thug named The Tiger, but instead Ajo Kawir falls in love with Iteung, a gorgeous female bodyguard who works for the local mafia. Alas, the course of true love never did run smooth...

Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash shows Eka Kurniawan in a gritty, comic, pungent mode that fans of Quentin Tarantino will love. But even with its liberal peppering of fights, high-speed car chases, and ladies heaving with desire, the novel continues to explore Kurniawan's familiar themes of female agency in a violent male world dominated by petty criminals and a corrupt police state.