Join our book club explored Indonesian literature giving you insight into this fascinating archipelago.
Our speaker Okky Madasari, the recipient of the 2012 Khatulistiwa Literary Award for her novel Maryam. Her first novel, Entrok (2010), provides an epic account of the New Order era and was published in English translation as The Years of the Voiceless in 2013. In her tenth book, Genealogy of Indonesian Literature: Capitalism, Islam and Critical Literature, she investigates the origins and ideologies shaping the nation’s modern literary landscape. A scholar as well as a writer, she completed her doctoral studies at the National University of Singapore in 2024, focusing her research on Indonesian censorship and knowledge production.
Okky Madasari is a distinguished author and sociologist. In the literary field, she is an accomplished author of novels, short stories, children’s fiction, and poetry. Her works have been translated and published in Malay, English, German, and Arabic, earning her numerous prestigious national and international awards.
As a social scientist, Okky earned her PhD from the National University of Singapore, specializing in the sociology of knowledge, censorship, and knowledge production. Under the OM Group umbrella, she established and manages Omong-Omong Media, an alternative knowledge production platform, as well as the OM Institute, a dedicated research and training center.