Oceans of Longing

Born into a high-status family of the Batak ethnic group indigenous to North Sumatra, Sitor Situmorang (1924–2014) was a Dutch-educated Indonesian nationalist who experienced firsthand the transition from the Dutch East Indies of his youth to the modern Indonesia of his adulthood.

The stories in this collection are a window into the world of a writer dedicated to exploration and change but resolutely attached to the land, people, and stories of his homeland. Set variously in western Europe, post-independence Jakarta, and modernizing communities in his native North Sumatra, the stories live in—as the translators put it—the “perpetual tension between the urge to wander and a longing for origins."

Harry Aveling is professor in the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures, and Linguistics at Monash University. Keith Foulcher, honorary associate at the University of Sydney, writes on Indonesian literary and cultural history. Brian Russell Roberts is associate professor of English at Brigham Young University.