My Neighbour, The Dictator
Tari Lang
Monsoon Books: 2026
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Back when I was a kid in the 1980s, Jakarta was a crowded city of organised chaos, somewhere between sprawling village and budding metropolis. Bicycle rickshaws operated in the shadows of nascent skyscrapers. Homes were lit by fluorescent bulbs but street vendors still hung kerosene lamps out for roadside dining.

According to a UN report released at the end of 2025, Jakarta, with almost 42 million inhabitants, is the world’s most populous city. Glittering shopping malls line wide avenues, threaded by a light rail that whisks commuters above traffic-choked streets. Given this, it always surprises me how little people know about Indonesia, much less its history.

This is the familiar world I was immersed in when reading Tari Lang’s memoir, My Neighbour, The Dictator. The book opens on the morning of 1 October 1965. On that day, fourteen-year-old Tari woke up to army soldiers, rifles in hand, trampling the tropical flowers on her street. It was the morning after an attempted coup d’état, known in Indonesia as the 30 September Movement. At least, it appeared to be a coup. Decades later, it’s still not entirely clear what happened. Was it a coup or a counter-coup? A disastrous putsch by communist plotters or an intra-military power struggle in which one general came out on top? The answer depends on who you ask.

• Tags: Atika Shubert, Indonesia, Issue 44, Suharto, Tari Lang