Short & Satisfying Book Club: "Dog Meows, the Cat Barks" by Eka Kurniawan
About this Event
The Short and Satisfying Book Club led by Georgia Court is for those looking for a shorter read that is ripe for discussion. January's selection is The Dog Meows, the Cat Barks by Eka Kurniawan, translated from the Indonesian by Annie Tucker. In a small Javanese town, young Sato Reang rebels against his father's insistence that he become a pious child, trading prayer and obedience for mischief, pleasure, and increasingly consequential acts of defiance. At just 128 pages, this funny, restless coming-of-age novel explores faith, family, freedom, and what can happen when rebellion becomes its own kind of belief.
We will meet in person at our store location at The Mark, 117 S. Pineapple Ave. The book club is $14.95 which includes a copy of The Dog Meows, the Cat Barks to be picked up at Bookstore1 any time before our meeting.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Sato Reang enjoys an idyllic childhood of soccer, fighting crickets, and mischief in his Indonesian village--until the day he must be circumcised, and his observant father forces him into a life of Islamic piety. For years, Sato outwardly obeys his father, but all the while the boy chafes at the strictures of his religious routine, longing for everyday pleasures and vowing to himself that he will "become a child who was not pious." His freewheeling linked anecdotes--mixing worldliness and naïveté, cruelty and innocence--are narrated with a toggling between first and third person ("I"/"he" or "Sato Reang") that potently conveys his disassociation. His adolescent, hormone-fueled crotchetiness expresses dissent: I stopped going to mosque. I no longer joined in worship. I never said my prayers before bed. Sato Reang eats with his left hand--so stupid--and barges in where he pleases, without calling out a greeting. If I was feeling lazy, I'd just piss on a banana tree, and I wouldn't wash myself off after. But amid various mysterious portents and even within the hilarity, Sato's callow sang froid (with its undercurrents of pain and shame)--and his comic pranks--soon invite tragedy.
A psychologically timeless story--anyone who's ever had an overbearing parent and resented them will relate--The Dog Meows, the Cat Barks is Eka Kurniawan's most contemporarily relevant book: he's thinking about (and rejecting) militancy and moral certitude of any kind.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Born in West Java in 1975, the day that the little ex-Portuguese colony East Timor declared its sovereign independence. which was to last just nine days before being annexed by Indonesia. The author of novels, short stories, essays, movie scripts, and graphic novels Eka Kurniawan has been described as “one of the few influential writers in Indonesia” (The Jakarta Post).
Where is it happening?
USD 17.86
