Saman: A Novel

"The book came out at the right time, right after the collapse of the New Order regime. The story broke many barriers of various taboos and sensitive topics, including the rise of women authors. To me, Saman was a mark of a new era in literature. Politics, sex, and religion. Even though there may be books that talk about those three topics separately, with different degrees of subtlety, the way Ayu combined them and wrote about them quite straightforwardly in Saman was fresh and exceptional. ‘Fragrant literature’ was initially a media gimmick, written in an article on our national newspaper, Kompas . The term was used to depict the rising of new Indonesian female authors, including myself. Even though these authors came from different genres with various topics, it was undeniably apparent that female authors became a trend in Indonesian publishing. ‘Fragrant literature’ was a term to oppose the old image of Indonesian literature that had been dominated by male authors who were poor and unkempt. I didn’t find it controversial in the beginning. But then, ‘fragrant literature’ was later used in many discussions as a general term for new female authors to question the quality of their work—whether or not they were mere instant sensation."