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Advance Praise for Potions and Paper Cranes
Editor’s Choice of the Historical Novel Society November 2014:
See review: historicalnovelsociety.org
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Melani Budianta, Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies, Faculty of Humanities, University of Indonesia:
Potions and Paper Cranes breaks the popular romance mold through its narrative strategy to give each character a voice… making the fictional world more complex than just a black and white dichotomy. Underneath the novel is a critique against the chauvinistic, masculine nationalist paradigm that sanctions violence against women and breaks families. Written by an Indonesian female of Chinese descent about the WWII era, the novel opens up rich material to uncover issues of historical memory, representations, identity, and transnational engagement.
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Harry Aveling, Associate Professor of Asian Studies, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia:
A sensitive translation of a novel that is by turns profoundly emotional and deeply violent.
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George Quinn, Adjunct Professor, College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University:
Japan and Java clash and intertwine in Lan Fang’s Potions and Paper Cranes, set in the old commercial center of Surabaya during the Second World War. Themes of domestic violence, misplaced romance, passionate sex, separation, and reunion drive the narrative, but it is the fate of women and children in war that is at the heart the novel. The story is told with lush and unashamedly melodramatic emotion yet remains memorably authentic. Ultimately Potions and Paper Cranes affirms the fragility of hatred, and the capacity of memory and love to endure a lifetime of separation.
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More Reviews
Read Potions and Paper Cranes Reviews on Amazon here.
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Dewi Anggraeni in Tempo Magazine – Jakarta, Indonesia:
Fiction, when well-written, can be more powerful than factual texts. The story as it unfolds, is ab- sorbed into your subliminal con- sciousness and, you remember it for a long time, in some cases, even involuntarily. So, if young people are no longer attracted to … read full review
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Jean Bartlett in the Mercury News and Pacifica Tribune – California, USA:
“Sulis is a young woman selling potions in Surabaya’s harbor district,” reads the jacket synopsis of Lan Fang’s “Potions and Paper Cranes.” “She meets Sujono, a coolie with dreams of becoming a freedom fighter and whose passion for Matsumi, a geisha called … read full review
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