NETFLIX Original Series in 2023
Kusala Sastra Khatulistiwa Literary Award 2012 Nominee

Soeraja is dying. On his deathbed he calls for Jeng Yah, a woman who is not his wife. His
three sons, Lebas, Karim, and Tegar—heirs to Kretek Djagad Raja, Indonesia’s largest clove
cigarette empire—are shocked, and their mother is consumed by jealousy. So begins the
brothers’ search into the deepest recesses of Java for Jeng Yah, to fulfil their father’s dying
wish and to learn the truth about the family business and its secrets. Cigarette Girl is more
than just a love story and the soul-searching journey of three brothers. Set on the island of
Java the story follows the evolution of a family’s kretek, or clove cigarette, business from its
birth in the Dutch East Indies of the early 1940s, and it takes readers through three generations
of Indonesian history, from the Dutch colonial era to the Japanese occupation, the struggle
for independence and the bloody coup of 1965 in which half a million Indonesians were
hunted down and killed. Rich in detail, with characters who struggle to right the wrongs of
past generations, their relationships torn apart by the viciousness of revolution and politics,
Cigarette Girl introduces readers to the history of Indonesia through clove cigarettes and
unrequited love.