A Dark Tale From Cottonwood Grove

Cursed with a cleft lip and a disreputable father, Mat has been an outcast sincebirth in Cottonwood Grove, his village in Indonesia. Never having known loveor kindness, he grows up to be a violent and aggressive man, ever ready to killanyone who annoys him. Inayatun is the village beauty, surrounded by admirers,and flagrantly promiscuous. Miraculously, when this unlikely couple meets, theyfind true love and happiness in each other. But the past won't let them be. Thereare too many in the village who have scores to settle with Mat, and who lust afterInayatun. A plot is hatched which leaves Inayatun and her unborn baby dead.Mat is accused of the murders but is saved from the gallows by the testimony ofhis grandfather, who mysteriously reappears after 15 years. But the people ofCottonwood Grove take the law into their own hands. A vigilante mob attackshim and leaves him for dead.Mat's story is recounted in a coffee shop by the notorious ne'er-do-well WartoKemplung. What at first seems like a tale of small-town scapegoating and defianttrue love ultimately reveals a grudge nursed for generations, and the animositybetween peasant farmers and corrupt government forces. Amongst Warto'slisteners is a journalist who decides to serialize the story in his newspaper. But in astartling turn of events, Warto disappears, and a stranger appears on the journalist'sdoorstep-leaving him to wonder: who was it who died? Who killed who?In this brilliant tour de force that combines Javanese oral tradition and urbanlegend with the literary frame of the unreliable narrator, Mahfud Ikhwan hasestablished himself as one of the most exciting new literary voices to emergefrom Asia.