Interesting to read something Indonesian; hadn't done that before. The story has magical realist qualities, which is always fine, but is also very violent, sexual and violently sexual: plenty of rape in this book. That was a bit much, even though there's some really brutal and macabre humour to offset all the unpleasantness.

But despite the rapes, Beauty Is a Wound is an interesting book and a curious view to the Indonesian 20th century, one that I hadn't seen before anywhere else.