Author Norman Erikso Pasaribu garnered quite the accolades throughout 2022 with a short story collection titled Cerita-cerita Bahagia, Hampir Seluruhnya (CCB). The book has been translated into English, with the title Happy Stories, Mostly, by renowned translator and writer Tiffany Tsao. It also won the Republic of Consciousness Prize, an annual British literary prize, and was long-listed for the prestigious International Booker Prize.

With multiple international awards attaching to the book, readers might think that CCB is a heavy read. However, according to Norman, that is not exactly the case.

"To be honest, most of the stories in CCB were meant to be playful when written. They were fun experiments. It's like a linguistic 'what if' game," said Norman, who was in the middle of his three-month residency at the Centre for Stories in Perth, Western Australia, at the time of the interview. It was part of his prize that he won with the inaugural Patricia Kailis International Writing Fellowship.

"All the stories talk about the lives of queer people because those are the things that are important to me, [that] I see every day [and] worry me at night when I can't sleep."

Norman also let his impulse to experiment with the linguistic aspects of the Indonesian language run amok this time.

"[The initial idea was something like] what if I make sentences with circling syntax like Gertrude Stein? Or, how fun would it be to make up stories that generate stories that give birth to [even more] stories?"

Popular

Explore nearby, spend wisely: intra-provincial travel boom

Furniture exporters decry new quarantine rule

Jokowi faces storm of lawsuits six months after stepping down