{"product_id":"beauty-is-a-wound-9780811223638","title":"Beauty Is a Wound","description":"The epic novel \u003cem\u003eBeauty Is a Wound\u003c\/em\u003e combines history, satire, family tragedy, legend, humor, and romance in a sweeping polyphony. The beautiful Indo prostitute Dewi Ayu and her four daughters are beset by incest, murder, bestiality, rape, insanity, monstrosity, and the often vengeful undead. Kurniawan's gleefully grotesque hyperbole functions as a scathing critique of his young nation's troubled past: the rapacious offhand greed of colonialism; the chaotic struggle for independence; the 1965 mass murders of perhaps a million \"Communists,\" followed by three decades of Suharto's despotic rule.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cem\u003e Beauty Is a Wound\u003c\/em\u003e astonishes from its opening line: One afternoon on a weekend in May, Dewi Ayu rose from her grave after being dead for twenty-one years.... Drawing on local sources--folk tales and the all-night shadow puppet plays, with their bawdy wit and epic scope--and inspired by Melville and Gogol, Kurniawan's distinctive voice brings something luscious yet astringent to contemporary literature.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eKurniawan, Eka:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - The internationally acclaimed author of \u003cem\u003eBeauty Is a Wound\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eMan Tiger\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cstrong\u003eEka Kurniawan\u003c\/strong\u003e was born in West Java in 1975, the day that the little ex-Portuguese colony East Timor declared its sovereign independence.\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eTucker, Annie:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - \u003cstrong\u003eAnnie Tucker\u003c\/strong\u003e won a PEN\/Heim Translation Fund Award for her Eka Kurniawan translation.","brand":"New Directions Publishing Corporation","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50697299132690,"sku":"9780811223638","price":15.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_726c73c4-4559-435c-8eed-a7d1d0bb1908.jpg?v=1734298695","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/beauty-is-a-wound-9780811223638","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}