Book description
Set in Sumatra in the 1950s, Jaipong Dancer is a story of lost
innocence and complex moral dilemmas. It follows the journey of Yahyu, a
young Javanese dancer, who runs away from a forced marriage and becomes
unwittingly involved in the violent struggle for Sumatra’s independence
from Jakarta. On her long passage from fame to degradation Yahyu
experiences love, hate, sexual slavery and the horror of the rebels’
last bloody battle deep in the Barisan Mountains. During her short life
Yahyu has been a mother, a wife, a murderer and a whore, while
struggling to keep her basic belief in right and wrong. Could anyone,
particularly her lost husband and child, ever understand and accept her
fall from grace?
