Pick of the week last month, but we just received our copy today.

«Goenawan Mohamad has been at odds with the prevailing powers in Indonesia almost since his birth. His father was executed by Dutch occupying forces in 1947; when in his 20s Mohamad was denounced by the Indonesian Community Party and fled to Europe. The magazine, Tempo, which he founded in 1971, was banned by Soeharto’s regime in 1984. Under Soeharto, he developed an oblique and allegorical style of writing to avoid censorship. Unlike most opinion pieces, Mohamad’s essays written for Tempo are tantalisingly subtle and nuanced. Instead of easy outrage at the murder of a girl by her Palestinian father, Mohamad approaches this tragedy through a contemplation of the notions of “difference” and “sameness”. This tension between the “I” and the “not I” is teased out in another essay about monotheistic fundamentalism and its need to crush the “other”. Like all good essayists, Mohamad is more interested in meditating on the complexities of modern multicultural societies than offering up simplistic solutions.»

- Fiona Capp, Review, The Age, July 23, 2005

Conversations with Difference is published by Tempo, Indonesia, but distributed in rest of Asia and Australia by Singapore University Press.

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