For an avid reader, Indonesia is not the best country to live in – and Makassar is even worse than cities on Java, in terms of literary atmosphere. Gramedia, the biggest bookstore here, doesn’t stock English-language books or magazines, and not a lot of novels in Indonesian either. Most of the shelf space goes to (religious) self-help books and business books (“the 7 traits of a great manager”, that type of stuff). This is not just my own observation, Kompas stated yesterday that yearly only 10.000 new book titles get published in Indonesia, as opposed to 15.000 in (smaller) Vietnam and 140.000 in China. The government doesn’t care too much about the promotion of literature, according to Kompas.
So, I wasn’t expecting too much of the Makassar International Writers Festival, last weekend. Read More
jacco hupkens 