Eyewitness: Short Story

On November 1991, Indonesian soldiers opened fire on protestors in Dili, capital of East Timor, killing an estimated 250 people. For publishing a report on this massacre, Seno Gumira Ajidarma, an editor of Jakarta-Jakarta magazine at the time, was dismissed from his position. He sought another way to tell the truth about what was happening in East Timor –this time through “fiction.” The stories in Eyewitness both unsettle the mind and pull the heartstrings. With their strange, unnerving style, the stories also represent one brave author’s refusal to forget. “When journalism is gagged,” the author once said, ”literature must speak.”

• Seno Gumira Ajidarma, Author

  Having published more than 30 books since the 1980s, Seno Gumira Ajidarma is one of Indonesia’s most prolific authors. As a novelist, essayist, and short story writer, Seno’s work often both document everyday life and criticize contemporary social, cultural, and political conditions. His writing style is varied, ranging from reportage and realism to fantasy. Once asked whether his work is surrealism, magical realism, fantasy or postmodern journalism, he answered simply, “Call it whatever you want. It’s what I do.” In 2014, along with various journalists and communications professionals, he launched a blog called PanaJournal that featured human interest stories.

• Jan Lingard, Translator

• John H. McGlynn, Translator

  John H. McGlynn has translated several dozen publications under his own name, and through the Lontar Foundation, which he co-founded in 1987, has ushered into print close to two hundred books on Indonesian language, literature, and culture. He is the Indonesian country editor for MĀNOA, a literary journal published by the University of Hawai'i Press the senior editor for I-Lit, an on-line journal focusing on Indonesian literature in translation; a contributing editor to Words Without Borders and Warscapes, U.S. based literary journals; and an editor advisor for Jurnal Sastra, an Indonesian-language on-line journal. He is also a frequent speaker at seminars both in Indonesia and abroad.