On a political level, The Wandering suggests a new approach to narrative that is far more radical than simply revising state histories.
Like many authoritarian regimes during the Cold War era, Suharto’s dictatorship justified mass violence against Indonesian citizens by constructing a narrative that cast communists, activists, and even women’s movements as threats. Suharto’s US-backed, anticommunist New Order dictatorship fell in 1998 Paramaditha started writing fiction in the wake of three long decades of authoritarianism and censorship.Īgainst this backdrop, it is significant that Paramaditha’s choice of form rejects the very possibility of a single narrative. In Paramaditha’s hands, the CYOA form becomes especially powerful, given the political and literary context of Jakarta in the mid-2000s, when Paramaditha began her career as a writer. This quality teaches readers at a young age that their interpretations matter-not just to the meaning of the text overall, but to how the narrative unfolds. The central feature of the CYOA form is that it calls upon the reader to help shape the plot. The novel’s most attention-grabbing quality is that it is a “choose your own adventure” book, of the kind many of us traversed as children.
This is the first decision readers are confronted with in The Wandering, Intan Paramaditha’s playful, experimental novel, which was released earlier this year in Stephen J. But you, dear reader, do have three choices: Will you ask the cab driver to turn around and take you back home, to the New York apartment about which you recall nothing? Will you focus on your lost valuables and file a report with the authorities? Or will you continue onward, a hobbling heroine unfazed by a bit of imbalance, and get on that plane to your next destination? Your deal with the devil allowed you to travel freely but without purpose around the world, carried away from home by the curse of these scarlet high heels. They were a gift from an infatuated devil-your Demon Lover, as you refer to him-in a far-off metropolis, one with the sounds of the call to prayer, motorbike traffic, and meatball vendors echoing across skyscrapers. But you look down and find you’re missing a shoe-only one foot is ensconced in a precious, ruby-red slipper. In your hand is a one-way ticket to Berlin. You’re in a New York City taxi, speeding toward JFK airport.
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