Amba: The Question of Red
Country: Indonesia
Author Name: Nina Andiana
Publisner Name: Speaking Tiger
Original Language: Indonesian
Amba is the oldest child of a teacher from Kadipura, Central Java.
She is named after the character Amba in Mahabharata.
She left her hometown to study English Literature at Gajah Mada University, Yogyakarta.
When it is decided that she will marry Salwa Munir, a lecturer who adored her, Amba was shocked at the coincidence—in the Mahabharata story, Princess Amba was pledged to King Salwa.
One day in Kediri, she met Dr.
Rashad, a young doctor who had graduated from Leipzig University and was employed in a hospital.
Amba once again was shocked, for Dr.
Rashad’s first name was Bhisma—in Mahabharata, Princess Amba was kidnapped by the warrior Bhisma, whom she fell in love with.
Will Amba’s name decide her fate?
Amba and Bhisma’s passionate relationship ended abruptly in 1965, amidst the political turmoil and violence that followed the G30S incident in Kediri and Yogyakarta.
Bhisma vanished unexpectedly—while Amba was pregnant.
A few years later, shortly after Amba married a German researcher, she learnt that Bhisma had passed away on Buru Island.
Apparently, following a clash in Yogyakarta, Bhisma had
...been imprisoned in Java and exiled there since the end of 1971, along with 7.000 other persons suspected of being “communists” the regime.
Amba, who never ceased loving Bhisma, travelled to the island with a former political prisoner from Ambon.
She discovered Bhisma's letters, which he had written to her for years but never got sent, instead had been kept under a tree.
These letters, which were kept concealed for years, revealed not just Bhisma's vivid memories of Amba, but also a variety of events—both cruel and touching—in the lives of the Pulau Buru prisoners.
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