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ust before the recent cold snap smothered Europe, author Leila Chudori visited Paris and read from her book at the first French Pasar Malam meeting of 2012.

 Prior to her brief journey to Paris, the author was invited by the annual Dutch Winternachten Literary Festival to read from her work in the Hague, which is a short train ride from Paris.

Leila was delighted to be back in the French capital because she was finishing her novel Pulang (Going Home), the setting of which was Paris, known as the “City of Light”. The book touches on Indonesian political exiles from 1965 and their fate in France.

“I invited Leila because she is one of the rare writers who can write powerfully in a poetic way, about real stories, with lively dialogues about sympathetic people without seeking to teach or demonstrate anything in particular to her readers,” says Johanna Lederer, who heads the Banian publishing house, a division of the Franco-Indonesian association Pasar Malam.

A month before the Paris book reading event, tickets at Restaurant Indonesia, which would host the event, had rapidly sold out. The reason for this popularity was not only because champagne was being offered by Pasar Malam’s Dutch president and former diplomat Robert Aarsse, or because delicious food would follow, but because members were really curious to meet the author.

On the way to the event, the street was blocked by Turkish protesters, but all those carrying tickets managed to slip past the barricades and police into the restaurant, located near the French Senate. The reading session took place in the cozy cellar room of the restaurant.

Wilma Margono, formerly Indonesian and a resident in Paris since marrying her French husband over 25 years ago, came right after work to meet her favorite author.

“Since senior high school, I have been an avid reader of her short stories. Leila continued to write for young people and the contents were always interesting for her faithful readers,” she said of the author, who began to write stories when she was 11-years-old.

Wilma praised Leila’s works and said she had followed Leila’s career as a journalist while studying French at the University of Indonesia in Jakarta, and then later in France; reading as many articles as she could that Leila had written for Tempo magazine, where she is a film critic, and other publications.

Many of those present that evening were struck by her sharp powers of observation in various articles.

Leila, considered one of Indonesia’s boldest storytellers and prolific writers, won a scholarship to study political science in Canada after high school in Indonesia.

The writer, who enjoys reading authors such as Julian Barnes, has also written a script for a movie called Drupadi and continues to work for television as well as her other activities.

With her great sense of humor, Leila charmed the cultural section of the Indonesian Embassy at the event as well as others with witty answers to questions prepared by Indonesian documentary filmmaker Halida Leclerc.

Lots of laughter ensued while Leila tried to answer the questions honestly while being filmed. The interview preceded a reading from the extracts of her book, 9 dari Nadira (9 from Nadira), to an audience both in Indonesian and in English, with a preliminary translation by Jennifer Lindsay.

Her book 9 from Nadira won the prestigious Language Body Literary Award following its 2009 publication by Gramedia.

Leila said that it was not really an autobiography but did contain auto-biographical elements experienced during her life-time. Johanna Lederer is considering having Leila’s short stories translated into French for a collection of Banian Publications, which may hit stores sometime in 2013.

Lederer believes that Leila’s works allow readers the pleasure of entering another world where they can make friends with the protagonists while reading.

Leila’s works have been published in several collections of short stories, some in English, in anthologies and literary magazines in Indonesia. One of them, Malam Terakhir (The Last Night) written in 1989, was translated into German.

Besides finishing her book Pulang, she is also preparing to write what she calls a prequel to the book 9 dari Nadira, which centers on the tragic and unexplained suicide of Nadira’s mother.

Again the focus in the book will be the contrast between tradition and modernity and what it means for Indonesian women to live a cross-cultural experience.

Rain Chudori-Soerjoatmodjo, Leila’s young daughter with ex-husband Yudhi, is already a writer and thus carries on the family tradition. Her maternal grandfather, Muhammad Chudori, was one of Indonesia¹s first journalists at Antara News Agency.

“My fervent desire is that my daughter finishes her education and then continues on her way through life,” Leila says.

In her own way, Leila has enlivened the country’s literary scene and has recorded historic changes in society by being a groundbreaking female writer.