Novel
Tiger!
Harimau! Harimau!
Mochtar Lubis · 1975
Synopsis
After two weeks gathering resin in the Sumatran forest, seven men from the village of Air Jernih set off on the way home, led by Wak Katok, a healer and martial arts master who hands out amulets to them. The youngest, Buyung, nineteen, the village's best marksman, goes back alone to check a trap and meets, beside a stream, Siti Rubiyah, the young wife of their host, who is weeping. The next day, after shooting a deer, the gatherers hear a tiger roar, and soon realise that it is stalking them.
Context
The novel was born in captivity: in 1963, the author twice noted in his diary the true story of seven men devoured by a tiger, and drew from it a first version entitled Hutan, the forest, reworked until its publication by Pustaka Jaya in 1975. Étienne Naveau, its French translator, reads in it a political allegory in which the chief with the amulets stands for Sukarno, a reading the author himself endorsed. The book was translated into Dutch in 1982, into English in 1991, then into French in 2019.
Who it is for
A short novel, translated into French and English; it reads at first as an adventure story before revealing itself to be a moral fable.
Prizes and reception
Named best book of 1975 by a foundation of the Ministry of Education, it was awarded again in 1979; A. Teeuw judged its moral too heavy-handed.
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