Longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2022
Playful,experimental,and charged,Happy Stories,Mostly is a collection of ten stories that queer the norm. Inspired by Simone Weil's concept of "decreation," and often drawing on Batak and Christian cultural elements,the stories put queer characters in situations and plots conventionally filled by hetero characters.
In one story,a new staff member is introduced to their new workplace - a department of Heaven devoted to archiving unanswered prayers. In another,a woman's attempt to vacation in Vietnam after her gay son commits suicide turns into a nightmarish failed escape. In the speculative-historical "The Giant Man: The Real Story," a young man finds himself haunted by the tale of a giant man living in colonial-era Sumatra.
A blend of science fiction,absurdism,and alternative-historical realism,Happy Stories,Mostly is a powerful puff of fresh air,aimed at destabilizing the heteronormative world and exposing its underlying rot.
Publisher: Tilted Axis PressISBN: 9781911284635Weight: 166 gDimensions: 198 x 129 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
"Pasaribu is one of the most important Indonesian writers today." -Litro Magazine"Happy Stories,Mostly...navigates queer suffering with a deep supply of tenderness and humour - and with empathy for all its characters." -Exberliner Magazine"An enticing collection,where the smallest pedestrian acts-such as finding a secret journal or getting a cubicle to work in-have the power to force characters to question their internalized biases." -Asymptote Journal "Pasaribu tells a truth plain and human,stripped to reveal its strangeness,its absurdity,its pain...A quiet but rigid resistance against that world's desire to maim the queer spirit." -Singapore Review of Books"The book's formal diversity,epigraphs,mixing of genres,signal to a medley oftraditions that cannot easily be explained as a singular poetry from the'margins.'Byreferencing Indonesian writers like Wiji Thukul alongside Herta Muller and RichardSiken,Sergius Seeks Bacchus emerges not from the sidelines but from within the continuousand intertextual script of transnationalism." -The Poetry Review"Literally and metaphorically driven underground by unorthodox desires,Pasaribu'sprimary stance is seeking; theirs is a restless questing as his cast of characters search for ashared history that is textually present but remains elusively out of reach." -MascaraLiterary Review"A new and magical voice emerging in literature,yet one almost preternaturally wise,profoundly celebratory of the history and possibility of poetry." -Christos Tsiolkas,author of The Slap and Damascus
Kommentar