Under a bright sunny sky, the three-day Byron Bay Writers鈥� Festival welcomed Andrea Hirata who charmed audiences with his modesty and gracious behavior during two sessions.
Andrea also attended a special event where he and Tim Baker, an Australian surfing writer, spoke to a gathering of several hundred school children. During one session, Andrea was on a panel with Pulitzer Prize winning journalist from Washington, DC, Katharine Boo, which he said was a great honor.
The August event for the school children was very meaningful to Andrea, the barefooted boy from Belitung, as he made mental comparisons with the educational opportunities of these children, compared to what he experienced.
And now his own life story is about to become even more amazing, as his book Laskar Pelangi (The Rainbow Troops) is being published around the world in no less than twenty-four countries and in 12 languages. It has caught the eye of some of the world鈥檚 top publishing houses, such as Penguin, Random House, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, (New York, US) and many others. Translations are already on sale in Brazil, Taiwan, South Korea and Malaysia.
All this has come about because of the feeling of appreciation that the young Andrea felt for his teacher, Muslimah. He promised her that he鈥檇 write a book for her someday. This was because for him and his school friends, a book was the most valuable thing they could think of.
Andrea told a story that illustrated this fact. When royalties flowed in for him he decided to give his community a library. He spent a lot of money on books. He left the village headman in charge of administering the library. However, when he came back several months later, all the books were gone. People loved the books, but they had no concept of how a lending library functioned.
鈥淪ome of them could not even read, but they just loved to have a book, an object of great value and importance, in their homes. We will restock the library with books and this time it will be run by our own administration,鈥� he laughed.
Andrea told this story as we sat in the coffee shop adjoining a Gold Coast City Library, one of 12 scattered around the city. One of the librarians, Jenneth Duque, showed him around the library, including the new state-of-the-art book sorting machine, for processing returns located in the staff area. As he saw the books being returned through pigeonholes by the borrowers and the computerized conveyor belt sorting them into the correct bin for reshelving, the sight made him laugh and prompted the telling of that story.
Andrea wrote the book for his teacher while in the employ of Telkom, but the completed manuscript was taken from his room, which was located in a Bandung student accommodation community. Whoever took the manuscript knew enough to send it to a publisher and that鈥檚 how Andrea, an unhappy postal service worker who had studied economics in Europe and the UK, became the accidental author of the biggest selling novel in Indonesia鈥檚 history.
He has since written seven more books.
Fast forward to 2011 and Andrea was in Iowa, the US, where he did a reading of his short story, The Dry Season. He was approached by an independent literary agent, Kathleen Anderson. They talked, but for six months there was no news until an email arrived telling him that one of the best publishers in the US, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, had accepted his book.
Then every week, more publishers said 鈥測es鈥� and now he has 24 contracts from the world鈥檚 leading publishers.
Andrea worked with Angie Kilbane of the US on the English translations of Laskar Pelangi and its sequel Sang Pemimpi (The Dreamer). Translators from several other countries have visited his home village in Belitung to do research.
鈥淔or a long time I wondered what was the key to the enormous success of my book,鈥� Andrea said.
鈥淚 think there鈥檚 no single right answer. Perhaps people are fed up with writing focused on urban issues or esca
A message for mr. Andrea Hirata: Thanks for sharing your memories with us... Thanks for teaching us that we should always to be strong while facing obstacles no matter what happens in life... Thanks for transferring your life experience with this love... Thank you.
Saya membeli buku ini karena mendengar begitu banyak komentar positif tentangnya. Mungkin karena itulah saya punya pengharapan yang tinggi. Dan mungkin karena itulah saya kecewa saat membacanya. Ternyata tidak sebagus yang saya harapkan, setidaknya, pada bagian-bagian awal. Setengah terakhir buku ini lebih bagus daripada bagian awalnya.
Buku ini berkisah tentang sebelas anak miskin dari kampung Pulau Belitong dan petualangan mereka bersama sebagai murid-murid seangkatan di sekolah Muhammadiyah yang serba terbatas, sejak kelas satu SD hingga SMP. Ceritanya dituturkan lewat sudut pandang orang pertama, si Ikal, dan ditulis berdasarkan kenangan masa kecil penulisnya.
Cerita dibuka dengan hari pertama sekolah, ketika anak-anak dan para guru dengan cemas menanti sampai jumlah anak mencapai sepuluh orang supaya sekolah bisa diadakan pada tahun ajaran itu. Saya suka detail-detail yang disajikan--tentang baju baru, sepatu butut dan pensil merah-biru ... meskipun tak ada ketegangan karena kita semua tahu bahwa kuota itu akan terpenuhi. Kalau tidak, buku ini tak akan ada.
Cerita berlanjut dengan penggambaran tokoh-tokoh cerita. Ibu Muslimah dan Pak Harfan, tokoh-tokoh mengagumkan yang benar-benar patut dijadikan teladan. Dedikasi mereka pada pendidikan luar biasa. Saat Pak Harfan berkisah tentang Nabi Nuh, perasaan saya ikut tergugah. Pelajaran moral yang terselip juga bikin geli. Lalu ada cerita tentang Pulau Belitong itu sendiri, kampungnya dan tambang timahnya. Kemudian, kesepuluh murid, dengan porsi terbesar untuk Lintang si jenius dan Mahar si seniman. Lalu, petualangan-petualangan mereka dan sedikit kisah cinta, lalu ...
Saya berhenti membaca pada halaman 214. Tak tahan lagi, setelah memaksakan diri membaca beberapa puluh halaman terakhir. Saya heran juga, kenapa ya? Tokoh-tokohnya menarik. Kisah-kisahnya kocak. Metafor-metafornya unik. Jadi, mengapa saya tak bisa menikmati buku ini?
Saya merenung... Lalu saya pun menyadari alasannya.
Tak ada plot! Tak ada konflik! Selama 200 halaman saya hanya disuguhi perkenalan tokoh dan seting, tanpa ada konflik sama sekali. Pantas saya bosan. Ceritanya jalan di tempat. Setting waktunya pun tidak jelas, kapan setiap peristiwa ini terjadi. Saya cuma tahu, terjadinya antara kelas 1 SD dan 3 SMP, tapi entah kapan tepatnya.
Itu alasan pertama. Sekarang alasan kedua. Sudut pandangnya.
Pada saat mulai membaca dan mendapati sudut pandang orang pertama, saya mengharapkan gambaran intim tentang masa kanak-kanak, dilihat dan dialami melalui mata anak-anak, seperti (Harper Lee). Ternyata, saya mendapatkan kenangan yang dingin dan berjarak tentang masa kanak-kanak, dilihat dari mata penutur-dewasa. Keberjarakan penuturan seorang aku-dewasa ini yang membuat saya tidak bisa terlibat secara emosional. Padahal, orang biasanya memilih sudut pandang orang pertama, justru supaya pembaca bisa mengalami ceritanya melalui kacamata-unik si aku. Belum lagi ada beberapa kejanggalan yang terjadi akibat pemilihan sudut pandang ini.
Pertama-tama, si penutur menceritakan hal-hal yang tak mungkin diketahuinya. Misalnya, perasaan orang lain seperti ayah Flo (hal 46-47) dan pengalaman Lintang yang terjadi di rumahnya (hal 101-102). Andaipun Lintang menceritakan pengalamannya kepada Ikal sehingga Ikal bisa berkisah di buku ini, tentu ceritanya tidak seperti yang digambarkan di ceritanya, dengan kunang-kunang dan arwah-arwah para ilmuwan.
Lalu, pengamatan tentang situasi sosial di Belitong, terutama tentang Gedong. Pengamatan tentang kebiasaan orang-orang gedong itu begitu detail, mau tak mau saya bertanya-tanya, ini sebenarnya pengamatan siapa? Apakah Ikal pernah masuk ke dalam kompleks dan mengamati semua itu? Sepertinya tidak mungkin, kalau menimbang keketatan penjagaan di sana, sedangkan Ikal tak punya kepentingan masuk ke sana. Lagipula, kalau Ikal-semasih-anak-anak masuk ke sana, tentunya tidak untuk pengamatan sosial, dan tentunya ada rasa asing dan kagum melihat segala kecanggihan di sana. Selain itu, dia tak akan begitu fasih menceritakan segala Gorgonzola soup, Earl grey, snooker bar, piano Steinway and Sons, De Carlo (hal 43-46), padahal saat itu dia bahkan tak mengenal toaster (hal 358).
Jadi, apakah pengamatan setelah si penutur telah dewasa? Tapi tetap saja belum jelas, kapan si penutur pernah masuk ke Gedong. Tentunya cukup sering untuk bisa menceritakan kebiasaan sehari-hari warganya dan mengamati merk barang-barang mereka. Ketidakjelasan ini sekali lagi membuat jarak, seolah-olah si penutur bukan menceritakan pengalamannya (seperti layaknya dalam penuturan orang pertama), tetapi menceritakan pengetahuan yang entah diperoleh dari mana (seperti layaknya dalam penuturan orang ketiga serbatahu).
Lalu, percampuran antara aku-penutur (yang sudah dewasa) dan aku-dalam-cerita (yang masih anak-anak). Ini terutama saya rasakan dalam pengamatan si aku tentang Mahar. Tentunya si aku-penutur yang menyadari bahwa Mahar adalah seorang jenius, sedangkan aku-dalam-cerita masih turut bersama teman-temannya mengejek Mahar (hal. 154-155). Maka ketika Mahar sedang kebingungan, kalimat "Kasihan sahabatku seniman yang kesepian itu, yang tak mendapatkan cukup apresiasi, yang selalu kami ejek" (hal 224) menjadi janggal. Yang merasa kasihan tentu aku-dalam-cerita pada waktu peristiwa itu terjadi. Tapi yang berkata "yang tak mendapatkan cukup apresiasi, yang selalu kami ejek" tentu aku-penutur-dewasa.
Satu hal lagi yang mengganjal bagi saya adalah penggunaan nama-nama Latin dan Bahasa Inggris (!) untuk flora fauna, entah untuk alasan apa. Barangkali si penutur menyukai biologi (meskipun ini tidak disebut-sebut). Yang pasti, bagi saya, ini lagi-lagi memberi jarak. Pengamatan alam tidak mengesankan sebuah keakraban pribadi si penutur dengan alam sekitarnya, seperti misalnya deskripsi alam dalam (Ahmad Tohari), tetapi berkesan observasi ilmiah dari balik buku biologi yang berjarak dari objek pengamatan.
Itulah yang membuat saya berhenti membaca.
Untungnya, saya memutuskan untuk melanjutkan. Ternyata, mulai dari halaman 191, konflik muncul dan plot mulai bergulir. Saya pun mulai semangat membaca. Ada dua plot utama di paro kedua buku ini. Pertama tentang Mahar dan proyek-proyeknya, yang kemudian melibatkan Flo. Kedua tentang kisah cinta Ikal pada A Ling. Dua plot yang dikisahkan berselang-seling dan sempat bertemu di bab 24.
Kisah cintanya cukup manis dan tidak cengeng. Selain itu, perasaan yang digambarkan dalam plot ini jelas adalah perasaan si penutur-ketika-masih-kecil yang dirasakannya saat itu, jadi si penutur-dewasa sudah jarang mengganggu lagi, tidak lagi memberikan pengamatan-pengamatan dewasanya. Sekarang saya bisa ikut merasakan pahit-manisnya cinta pertama si aku.
Petualangan Mahar dan Flo cukup seru dan kocak, dengan sedikit nuansa mistis dan pesan di akhir kisah yang bikin ketawa.
Kisah ditutup dengan cerita anggota-anggota Laskar Pelangi 12 tahun kemudian.
Secara keseluruhan, buku ini ... ya, lumayanlah. Kelancaran bercerita, kelincahan berbahasa, dan tema yang diangkat sedikit mengimbangi ketersendatan plot dan kejanggalan pilihan sudut pandang. Lumayan.
I suppose this book needs no further introduction to the Indonesian audience. So let me be brief.
The good: - proper use of Indonesian language, a rarity nowadays - descriptive and detailed story-telling, also a rarity - funny, with unexpected and unusual metaphors.
The bad: - pretentious. Must he quote all sorts of Latin names and English words just to describe a quiet afternoon with birds and butterfly in a school yard? Must he go on and on about Mahar's masterpieces whose greatness escape me?
- confusing & often illogical timeline. Often times, it's not clear how old the kids are when events take place. Description of the things these kids can do seem to be beyond their age which makes me wonder about...
- exaggerated events. How old were they when the school won the Independence Day's parade and the Cerdas Cermat? How can the sole, young teacher cover all those topics (often beyond secondary school level) and being so poor, where do they (Lintang, particularly) obtain all the reading material or knowledge without TV, library, or radio?
- patronizingly religious. It takes a genuine effort on my side to ignore it.
- shallow plot: it's bad against good: PN and the rich are bad, greedy, stupid and will eventually be doomed. The poor is resilient, clever, strong and therefore will succeed. Islam is good, and paranormal activities are evil. I thought this is an intellectual novel, not a sinetron plot or a Palin's speech (oops!).
- too many useless sub-arches. Must he went on and on about Harriot just to describe his stupid first love with the owner of a dainty, smooth hand with perfect manicure? Do we need to get into such detail describing the pretentiously named Societeit de Limpai's trip to see Tuk Bayan Tula so that the two lazy bones can pass their exams?
- abrupt ending. The end of "Laskar Pelangi" happened when Lintang's card was dealt with and then the story fast forward twelve years later. It wasn't explained what contributed to Tripani's downfall, for example. Just a description (with another annoying little arch about Ikal and his niece). I think it's just a lazy handling again.
The verdict: I started off with high hopes but in the end, I was disappointed. It was engaging then it was pretentious and long. It was funny then it became preachy. It was clever then it got lazy. This book started off with a lot of potential. If told as a straight forward biography, ala Life in Shanghai, Angela's Ashes or others which simply tell a story of growing up in an era, with simple, to the point language, this book will be much more enjoyable. However, the author choose to romanticize his (self-assessed) heroic childhood and produce this pretentious and mediocre book instead.
Ide, peristiwa2 dalam buku ini sangat bersahaja, menarik. Buku ini memang bukan novel, tapi memoar. Secara isi bagus-lah. Sayang sangat lemah dalam teknik dan komposisi...
Awalnya, saya jatuh cinta sama nama buku ini. LASKAR PELANGI, doesn't it sound so beautiful. Sayangnya, cinta saya tidak cukup besar untuk membuat saya membeli buku ini di awal-awal terbitnya.
Malah niat saya sempat urung, saat secara tidak sengaja membaca review seorang teman yang bilang buku ini tidak masuk akal. Dia bilang pilihan katanya terlalu canggih untuk sebuah buku yang menggunakan PoV anak kecil. "Ah, mungkin hanya another best seller book without a proper writing" pikir saya waktu itu. Tapi karena kehebohan massa, dan karena cerita penuh semangat seorang teman yang menonton pembahasan buku ini di sebuah talk show, mau tak mau niat saya jadi muncul lagi. Dan akhirnya, setelah berhasil mengelabui seseorang untuk membelikan buku ini, saya membacanya. Saya jatuh cinta lagi.
Kata orang cinta itu buta, dan saya sepertinya membabi buta mencintai buku ini. Ya, saya tahu pemilihan katanya tidak masuk akal, ya, saya juga tahu banyak nama-nama latin yang memberi kesan pamer kepintaran, dan ya, saya juga merasakan ketidakkonsistenan PoV dari orang pertama menjadi orang ketiga. Tapi saya tidak peduli. Cinta saya buta. Buta, mutlak, and inexplicable.
Saya tidak tahu pasti kenapa saya mencintai buku ini, yang pasti saya tertawa dan menangis bersamanya. Saya tertawa melihat tingkah ikal yang jatuh cinta, saya tertawa melihat jebakan mahar yang cerdas, saya tertawa melihat kejudesan dan ketajaman sahara, dan saya berharap saya seberani flo. Tapi, tak ada yang bisa menyentuh hati saya seperti lintang. Lintang dan ayah bambu angin-nya.
saya membuka halaman pertama, dan saya langsung bermain disana bersama mereka, di sekolah rakyat yang hampir roboh di kepulauan bangka, di toko kelontong berbau tengik, di tengah festival kebudayaan, dan saya juga ikut duduk disana, di atas dahan salah satu pohon yang saya lupa namanya.
Saya rasa, saya jatuh cinta karena buku ini membawa saya terbang, melayang, hinggap, dan akhirnya mendarat bersama 10 orang anak kecil lainnya, dibawah langit berguratkan pelangi.
I don't know why but I am not as satisfied as others experienced.
Andrea Hirata, the author wrote it in a good descriptive way. Unfortunately, I get bored.
It talks about the education of students in remote area. An education for the poor, but the teachers teach that they don't have to feel shame due to their lack of financial status.
To be confident. To stand up. To express. To actualize.
It is a good topic, but I somehow get distracted with the way the author use the Latin names of plants. I feel it isn't a smoothly moving. How he associated a lot of things with certain figure which of course well-known worlwide but not the common ones, which makes me start to guess whether it is really a story of the people in remote area.
I have been to remote area, though only three districts. Currently, they can use television decoder to watch national and international television stations. But of course, the people in villages don't watch the international ones due to the language barrier. And it is happening now, how about (more or less) two decades ago, which is somehow be the current time of the story. Thus, I can't feel satisfied with this book.
The Rainbow Troops is a remarkable debut novel by a young man who once promised his schoolteacher he would write a book in her honor. Inspired by Hirata's own childhood experiences on the tiny, isolated island of Belitong, on the east coast of Sumatra, this is the poignant story of ten young children from among the islands poorest families, and their struggle to gain the education they are guaranteed under Indonesian law.
On his first day at Belitong's only free school, Muhammadiyah Elementary, Ikal breathes a sigh of relief when the tenth child the school needs to remain operational appears at enrollment at the last minute, saving him from being sent to work as a helper at the grocery market or a coolie (labourer) for the miners or fishermen to supplement his family's meagre income. As he takes his seat in the ramshackle building which contains not much more than a chalkboard and a few desks and chairs he marvels at the opportunity he has been given, ignoring the leaking roof, "...a roof with leaks so large that students see planes flying in the sky and have to hold umbrellas while studying on rainy days", crumbling concrete floors and missing wall planks. In front of Ikal stands fifteen year old Bus Mus, the new class teacher, and school supervisor, Pak Harfan. Beside him sits nine other children, the Rainbow Troops.
Though simply written, this is an inspiring tale of struggle against adversity told with warmth, humour and tenderness. The children, the Rainbow Troops, will capture your heart as Ikal shares their stories, recounting his friends achievements, triumphs and tragedies as they struggle to claim their right to an education. There is Lintang who leaves his home at dawn to pedal the 40km to school each day, dodging crocodiles and wading through flood waters, never missing a day, Mahar whose imagination entertains them all with stories and Haran who sits, smiling happily, in class even though he doesn't understand a word. learning what becomes of these ten (later 11) children is both heartbreaking and revealing.
The Rainbow Troops is also a story of quiet rebellion. Belitong lies in the shadow of the giant PN tin mining company who, with government approval, strip the land of its riches while caring nothing for its native citizens. Muhammadiyah Elementary educates its students with few resources, it's teachers are unpaid and it is constantly threatened with closure but it fights the injustice with everything it has.
It is impossible to read The Rainbow Troops and not be moved by such an incredible story that is more fact than fiction. With memorable characters, irresistible charm and touching simplicity, this is a story that reminds us to appreciate what we have but also to strive for what we want most. This is a story the world should know.
'Laskar Pelangi' was a phenomenal success when published in Indonesia in 2005, an immediate bestseller, spawning a TV series and film. This is the first of four novels Hirata has penned in the interim, and the first to be translated into English, now on the cusp of global release.