Laksmi Pamuntjak's 'Ellipsis' gets outstanding UK review

Laksmi Pamuntjak's 'Ellipsis' gets outstanding UK review

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

At home, Laksmi Pamuntjak, author of the three-volume Jakarta
Good Food Guide, showed she knew just what appealed to the
reading public when she made a restaurant guide a best-seller.

Abroad, her new book Ellipsis, an anthology of poems and
prose, which is published by Pena Klasik, was mentioned as one of
books of the year in Scotland's leading daily, The Herald.

Although some literary works of local authors, like those of
Pramoedya Ananta Toer, have also gained international
recognition, Laksmi has become the first whose book has been
mentioned as the book of the year.

In The Herald's Dec. 5 edition Scottish-Pakistani writer
Suhaayl Saadi wrote Ellipsis was an esthetically intense and
powerfully sensual poetry collection, in which the mess and
fragility of human relationships was enmeshed with politics and
religion.

In his words, Saadi said the reader is transfigured by a "lea
of silences".

True. The 89-page Ellipsis -- also the title of one of
Laksmi's poems, contains attuned poetry with meticulously
soothing words yet emotionally moving effects. As a whole, the
book speaks volumes on Laksmi's deft and critical stance in
viewing her surroundings.

Not a stranger to literary circles, Laksmi, who was born in
Jakarta on December 1971, is a regular contributor to news
magazine Tempo, having written columns and articles on politics,
literature and music since 1994.

Laksmi has also written for The Jakarta Post, the
socioeconomic journal Prisma and Djakarta! magazine.