Novel
Shackles
Belenggu
Armijn Pane · 1940
Synopsis
In colonial Batavia in the thirties, Dr Sukartono, known as Tono, absorbed by his patients, and his wife Tini, beautiful, modern and independent, no longer talk to each other; she refuses the role of devoted wife, he does not understand her revolt. Tono then meets again Rohayah, known as Yah, a former schoolmate who has fled an arranged marriage and secretly sings kroncong, and finds with her the peace he lacks at home.
Context
Balai Pustaka, the colonial government's publishing house, rejected it in 1938 as immoral; the novel then appeared in three instalments, from April to June 1940, in the review Poedjangga Baroe, which never published another novel. Interior monologues and broken-off sentences give access to the consciousness of characters chained to their past, as the title says. Translated into Mandarin, Russian, Malay and German, it appeared in English in 1988 as Shackles, translated by John H. McGlynn; it has not been translated into French.
Who it is for
To read a marital drama in which the difficult passage from tradition to modernity plays out in the colony.
Prizes and reception
Deemed daring by some and pornographic by others on its release, it was held by Muhammad Balfas in 1976 to be the best Indonesian novel of the pre-war period.