Category: Toko Buku

How a bored and awkward Scottish schoolgirl with a yearning for distant lands grew up to become a revolutionary hero in a remote archipelagic nation, eventually writing one of the most celebrated war novels of the 20th century, is the unlikeliest of stories, but one that Muriel Stewart Walker actually lived. Always searching for an […]

When Islam first arrived in Indonesia in the 15th C., it came ready-packaged in a mystical doctrine that was widely welcomed across Java. Though widespread conversion from the Hindu-Buddhist faith to Islam was complete by the 1600s, the old belief systems did not disappear. Buddhism and Hinduism had a presence on Java for 1000 years […]

I Am Woman is about women taking a stand against society and the patriarchal conventions that oppresses them. The world of Indonesian women is a large and hidden one, and writing and publishing stories is one way they are able to emerge from their hiding places. The stories are fictional works but nevertheless speak to […]

Tourists are instantly attracted to Bali’s people, culture and religion, but what they do not see are the island’s rural poor who are not a part of the tourism industry. Hidden away in small villages and subsistence farms, they live and work out of sight from the island’s highways and backroads. For 12 years Richard […]

For anyone wanting to move beyond tired travel guide formulas, award-winning travel writer and Indonesia expert Tim Hannigan has finally given Southeast Asia’s biggest country its proper due. A Geek in Indonesia provides a hip, streetwise introduction to an increasingly popular travel destination. From the author’s extensive first-hand experience gained from living many years in […]

Twilight in Kuta explores love, loss and infidelity in present-day Indonesia from a number of perspectives: the bule (Caucasian) English teacher, the frustrated and cheating Indonesian wife, the mixed-race schoolgirl, the Javanese ex-soldier and the naive village girl desperate for love. Their stories intertwine throughout the book, and the various narrators offer different interpretations of […]

Mangku Ketut Liyer became world famous for his role as Elizabeth Gilbert’s guru in her 2006 best-selling book Eat, Pray, Love and in the 2010 film by the same name. The book and the film tell of one woman’s search for spiritual fulfilment and love. Gilbert’s encounter with Liyer was to result in a constant […]

Myth, Magic and Mystery is a book of stories on the Bali’s origin myths, ancestor deities, spiritual obligations, ceremonies and rituals; healing arts; customary laws; love, marriage and family; death, the soul’s journey, reincarnation and the concept of heaven and hell. Grouped into four sections, each focusing on a particular aspect of Balinese life, culture […]

  Paul Sochaczewski is not your ordinary travel writer. His first visit to Southeast Asia was to the East Malaysian state of Sarawak when the 22-year-old took a life-changing tour of duty with the U.S. Peace Corp assisting elementary school teachers. He later worked at the WWF helping to create global campaigns to protect rainforests […]

In 1936 anthropologists Margaret Mead (1901-1978) and her husband, Gregory Bateson (1904-1979), moved to Bali and stayed for three years. Soon after their arrival, they retreated from the island’s lowlands, the focal point of scholarly and tourist activity, to the remote village of Bayung Gedé in Bali’s central highlands. Although they wrote relatively little about […]