Book Review: The Wandering (Intan Paramaditha)

You wake up disoriented. You’re in a New York City taxi, speeding toward JFK airport. In your hand is a one-way ticket to Berlin. But you look down and find you’re missing a shoe—only one foot is ensconced in a precious, ruby-red slipper. They were a gift from an infatuated devil—your Demon Lover, as you refer to him—in a far-off metropolis, one with the sounds of the call to prayer, motorbike traffic, and meatball vendors echoing across skyscrapers.

Your deal with the devil allowed you to travel freely but without purpose around the world, carried away from home by the curse of these scarlet high heels. Going back to Jakarta is not an option. But you, dear reader, do have three choices: Will you ask the cab driver to turn around and take you back home, to the New York apartment about which you recall nothing? Will you focus on your lost valuables and file a report with the authorities? Or will you continue onward, a hobbling heroine unfazed by a bit of imbalance, and get on that plane to your next destination?

This is the first decision readers are confronted with in The Wandering, Intan Paramaditha’s playful, experimental novel, which was released earlier this year in Stephen J. Epstein’s English translation. The novel’s most attention-grabbing quality is that it is a “choose your own adventure” book, of the kind many of us traversed as children.

Click here to keep reading. Luce Scholar Lara Norgaard writes for Public Books.