Book Review: Laut Bercerita by Leila Chudori

Hi book lovers, What book have you read recently?

Entering October, a month marked as the month of the TNI (Indonesian People's Army) which was held on October 5th. Even so, I will not discuss the birthday of the TNI even though the book I will review is still related.

Lately, I have been interested in Leila S. Chudori's books which tell the stories of activists during the critical times of 1968 and 1998. Leila's books are indeed fiction, but she was inspired by true stories in the past, which may still be related to her.

Laut Bercerita is actually not the first book by Leila that I have read. When discussing favorite authors with my friends some time ago, the name Leila S Chudori was brought up as a writer whose books became best sellers. The conversation was interesting to me so I found out about Leila through one of my friends (who was not present at the discussion at that time) who really admired Leila's books. For an introduction, I borrowed her book entitled; Namaku Alam. The book is thick and it took me a while to read it. However, I already liked Bu Leila's storytelling style so I looked for her other books. I will review the book Namaku Alam after I read her other book; Pulang.

So, I'm gonna share about a book, fiction but inspired by the real story, Laut Bercerita by Leila S. Chudori.

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Laut Bercerita

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Author: Leila S. Chudori | First Publishing: 2017 | Genre: Fiction

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This book has two POVs, namely Laut's POV, a student who later became active as an activist for the Wirasena, Wiranata group. In this book, Laut is described as the eldest of two siblings and has a younger sister named Asmara Jati. In the first part, which is told with a forward and backward plot, between when Laut was active with his fellow activist friends, and also when he and his friends were abducted, held captive, and tortured by Elang's troops.

Besides being active as a student, Laut was also active as writer and translator, where his father also worked at a newspaper office. Unlike his pragmatic younger sister, Asmara Jati, a medical student, Laut preferred reading literary books and then discussing them in various forums. Laut and his group, Wirasena, Wiranata, Laut was finally involved in various protests against the government which then made his group a fugitive.

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Even though has fiction as its genre, Laut Bercerita is a dark book because it tells about the activist movement before and after the 1998 crisis that forcibly disappeared 13 activists whose whereabouts are still unknown. The author took a true story so that when reading it every scene can be clearly visualized in my head, like watching a colonial era film.

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In this book, I like how the author makes analogies and creates them. Before Laut and his friends were finally kidnapped and held captive, the Wirasena organization, Wiranata had a basecamp in the Seyegan area, Yogyakarta. The most interesting thing about this basecamp is when Anjani, the mural artist, made a mural inspired by the Ramayana story. In the mural, instead of telling the story of Sita's kidnapping, Anjani made Rama the one who was kidnapped and then Sita saved him. For Anjani, this analogy represents the idea that today women are not only objects of suffering, women can be objects that move and save. I was impressed by Anjani's analogy, because in the end, implicitly this book also has a story that is the opposite of the Ramayana story.

Among the horrors of reading every torture Laut experienced, there was one part that was truly heartbreaking. It was when Laut called his father during his time as a fugitive. Reading the dialogue of his father calling Laut 'son' made my heart
groaned.

Then, Laut's letter to Anjani was my favorite part. It reminded me of the letters written by Zainuddin to Hayati, I read it and imagined these two characters. Ha ha.

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Overall, this book tells the story of activists during the New Order, 1998, which made me dig deeper into the real events of that time. Through this book, many questions about the 1998 era have been answered. This adds insight into what happened to this country

Through this book, my empathy arose for the families of the victims who until now have not received clarity about the fate of their families who were kidnapped, held captive, and tortured in 1998. 13 activists whose families are still faithfully standing in front of the state palace every Thursday with their black clothes and black umbrellas. I really want to hug those whose families were victims of the cruelty of the regime at that time.

However, when reading this book I found it difficult to remove the shadow of Alam on Laut, where both have disguised characters. When entering the Asmara Jati section, I could not remove the shadow of Alam because Asmara also has a little similarity to Alam. It is about the ability of Photographic Memory, Asmara Jati has the same ability as Segara Alam. In the discussion between the book Laut and the book Alam with my friend, we did regret how Leila could not create different characters. However, it did not deter me from reading the book. Laut Bercerita is a book that progresses very quickly. I have never finished reading this thick for two weeks and I finished it.

Laut Bercerita is totally recommended! I rate it as 4.5/5.

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Thanks in advance, to read my blog and hope you like my post!
See you on the next post...

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_{All photos taken by iPhone 13}

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