Javanese Gentry: A novel

I"n my mind rose a misty picture of a little girl in a floral dress. As for her face: nothing. I could only hope that she had been pretty. I sat overcome. What a procession of developments in one day! Only that morning I had left Madiun; at midday I was wobbling on a buggy past an ocean of rice fields; tonight, suddenly, I had been renamed by my parents and handed a wife."

Thus begins Sastrodarsono's life, returning to his village as a newly- appointed schoolteacher, and by virtue of that position, a member of the priyayi - functionary gentry awesomely elevated above the peasantry of his origins.

From those most traditional of Javanese institutions - change of name and a virtually imposed marriage-he moves on with his bride to found a line of modernizing generations active across the whole span of recent Indonesian history: the 20th century late-colonial period, Japanese occupation, war of independence and two decades of social disorder ending in the mid-1960s with the rise of Suharto's authoritarian New Order government.

The ideal of gentrification threads through this saga, both in the implicit concerns of a variety of characters and in the hopes of wretched villagers for whom the literacy necessary to approach that higher status is largely a forlorn dream.

Author of a large number of books brimming with different styles and genres, Umar Kayam gained a highly-deserved reputation as the voice of the common man. His books include short story anthologies, essays, novels, and children’s stories. His short story, A Thousand Fireflies, won the Horison Literary Prize in 1967 and he was named the recipient of the 1987 S.E.A. Write Award.