My knowledge of Indonesian history is limited, but I did eventually pick up that the characters and setting of Beauty Is a Wound served as complex allegories for the turbulence that Indonesians faced throughout the twentieth century. Kurniawan wrote an incredibly intricate story with an impressive cast of characters that detailed the very complicated and multigenerational history of Dewi Ayu and her family. Furthermore, the whole story was immersed in the magic realism genre, with Kurniawan making frequent nods to local folklore to further establish its roots in Indonesian culture and history.

With that said, I strongly hesitate to recommend this novel to anyone. It’s not because I thought it was bad but, rather, a result of carrying very mixed feelings throughout my reading experience due to the amount of sexual violence against women and ever-present misogyny. While I realize that the treatment of women is meant to serve as an allegory of sorts for what Indonesians went through (as far as I can tell), there were far too many instances when I felt that the inclusion of a rape/sexual assault scene was gratuitous and served little to no purpose other than for it to be included. It also raises the question of what it means for a male author to write female characters in a symbolic fashion like this, and I’m not entirely sure if there’s an easy answer for this.

Given my limited knowledge of Indonesia, I have no doubt that I’m missing a fair amount of cultural and historical context that might provide greater insight into why Kurniawan approached his story the way he did, and I’d be curious to know what Indonesians—particularly Indonesian women—thought of this novel.