2022
Day 1 of this Fantastic Festival
28 October 2022
I must be operating on adrenalin, as a 14-hour day yesterday left me on a high! The whole festival site was buzzing like a beehive with me flitting from session to session, collecting the golden pollen on offer. A smaller festival than in the past – I estimated 5-600 festival-goers at the opening session, but this number will increase. Just the one short afternoon shower which was not too disruptive.
Where to start? And how to be brief? At the beginning, I guess.
And that was the moving interview with the beautiful 84-year old Balinese author, Putu Oka Sukanta, this year’s recipient of the festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award. It was meeting him at the first festival in 2004 that launched my new career as a translator - he thrust a novella of his into my hands and asked me to translate it. The rest is history. Have since done several more of his short works, but it was his trilogy of novels based on his experience as a political prisoner under the Soeharto regime, translated by my friend Keith Foulcher, that featured yesterday. John McGlynn interviewed Putu Oka live on a large screen from Jakarta as he is too frail to travel. It was very moving as he is such a gentle, positive man, despite what happened to him as a young man. He said, to him as an intellectual and a writer, the greatest torture was not having books and pen and paper. He would write in the air. They were given the Koran and Bible - the prisoners found these very useful - tearing out pages to roll cigarettes! Besides writing, his career since those jail years has been in acupuncture and healing. We’ve discussed some of his works at Indolitclub, with Pak Putu joining us on Zoom.
They’re back! The dynamic duo, Michael Vatikiotis and Janet Steele, festival regulars who are so brilliant together. Here they discussed Michael’s new book about his family history in The Levant - his background is a mixture of Italian Jewish from Alexandria and Greek/ Palestinian - made a fabulous story. Michael’s research into his family, taking him back generations in the Middle East. Lives Between the Lines. Must read it.
And that was the moving interview with the beautiful 84-year old Balinese author, Putu Oka Sukanta, this year’s recipient of the festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award. It was meeting him at the first festival in 2004 that launched my new career as a translator - he thrust a novella of his into my hands and asked me to translate it. The rest is history. Have since done several more of his short works, but it was his trilogy of novels based on his experience as a political prisoner under the Soeharto regime, translated by my friend Keith Foulcher, that featured yesterday. John McGlynn interviewed Putu Oka live on a large screen from Jakarta as he is too frail to travel. It was very moving as he is such a gentle, positive man, despite what happened to him as a young man. He said, to him as an intellectual and a writer, the greatest torture was not having books and pen and paper. He would write in the air. They were given the Koran and Bible - the prisoners found these very useful - tearing out pages to roll cigarettes! Besides writing, his career since those jail years has been in acupuncture and healing. We’ve discussed some of his works at Indolitclub, with Pak Putu joining us on Zoom.
They’re back! The dynamic duo, Michael Vatikiotis and Janet Steele, festival regulars who are so brilliant together. Here they discussed Michael’s new book about his family history in The Levant - his background is a mixture of Italian Jewish from Alexandria and Greek/ Palestinian - made a fabulous story. Michael’s research into his family, taking him back generations in the Middle East. Lives Between the Lines. Must read it.
Kylie Moore-Gilbert, who is the Australian academic who was detained by the Iranians for almost three years, made a fabulous interview subject, not just on her own horrific experience, but she gave her insights into the current uprising in Iran and the issue of hostage diplomacy. She was swapped for three Iranian terrorists in Thailand, and her distress at the possibility that they might go on to commit acts of terrorism was palpable to us, the audience. She would feel personally responsible. Another book I must read. During her time in prison, she taught herself Farsi and this helped keep her sane and gave her some routine.
The afternoon was devoted to the young emerging writers and the launch of the anthology which only arrived just in time to be distributed at the launch. Not in time for it to be made available to Indolitclub attendees well before our session an hour later so people could get hold of it to read the stories in advance - (members from Australia had already read electronic copies, fortunately.)
Our public Indolitclub session was just wonderful. All the members attending the festival came and the two Indonesian authors of the stories we were discussing, a few other festival goers, plus lots of the young Indonesian writers. We sat in our usual democratic circle and everyone contributed their thoughts. The writers were thrilled to be part of it and have lots of questions thrown their way. So good for Indolitclub to have a real-life session again after so long on Zoom. Some Indolitclub members not from Sydney were meeting face to face for the first time too!
Amidst all this was the sheer pleasure of seeing Josh’s close mate from all the years he lived here, Gove. He came to Indolitclub too. Then we went and had dinner and his wife Stacia joined us. So much to talk about. Gorgeous people. I rang Josh and told him all about it. Made him very nostalgic for his old Bali life and friends.
Off to the festival site now for more - another jam-packed day ahead!