The Epic Novel Beauty Is A Wound Combines History, Satire, Family Tragedy, Legend, Humour And Romance In A Sweeping Saga. The Novel Begins With The Japanese Occupation Of Indonesia, Then A Dutch Colony, At The Time Of World War Ii. The Beautiful Half-Dutch, Half-Indonesian Prostitute Dewi Ayu And Her Four Daughters Are Beset By Incest, Murder, Bestiality, Rape, Insanity, Monstrosity And The Often Vengeful Undead. Kurniawans Gleefully Grotesque Hyperbole Functions As A Scathing Critique Of His Young Nations Troubled Past: The Rapacious Offhand Greed Of Colonialism; The Chaotic Struggle For Independence; The 1965 Mass Murders Of Perhaps A Million Communists, Followed By Three Decades Of Suhartos Despotic Rule. Beauty Is A Wound Astonishes From Its Opening Line: One Afternoon On A Weekend In May, Dewi Ayu Rose From Her Grave After Being Dead For Twenty-One Years . Drawing On Local Sources Folk Tales And The All-Night Shadow Puppet Plays, With Their Bawdy Wit And Epic Scope And Inspired By Melville And Gogol, Kurniawans Distinctive Voice Brings Something Luscious Yet Astringent To Contemporary Literature.