Laluba: A Collection of Short Stories

This anthology of Nukila Amal’s short stories describes the human condition, from day to day routine to extremes: people strolling, taking a break at a coffee bar, boredom, first love, the loneliness of the elderly, and the brutality of wars.

The characters in the stories could be anyone or anything: an expectant mother, an eccentric dancer, a dew drop, two talking hands, or a small crocodile bursting out from a picture. The stories take place in the Halmahera coastal region, the alleys and streets of Jakarta, a village in Corsica, a gallery in the Netherlands, a circus in the middle of nowhere, or the amusement park inside the eye. Several stories set off from the works of printmaker M.C. Escher.

“Nukila’s short stories take the reader to the deepest and most mysterious mental niches of the human psyche. Reading them is a complicated, touching, beautiful and amazing lingual experience.”
—Bambang Sugiharto

“Nukila Amal’s prose not only contains poems in exact rhyme and appropriate diction; but also uses fresh, often surprising, meticulous and lyrical metaphors, which are integrated into a rigorous, almost mathematical, structure.”
—Laksmi Pamuntjak