The Invisible Palace: The True Story of a Journalist's Murder in Java

Rating:
Summary: remarkable story; cracking read
Review: This book gives a great flavour of Java, by someone who has clearly spent a lot of time there. It's a true story, but reads like a novel: larger-than-life characters, bizarre plot twists, an exotic location, and a murder mystery. Set in Indonesia during 1996-1997, the country is just experiencing the first rumblings of political discontent. A journalist, Udin, is killed after writing stories critical of a local politician. The subsequent investigation turns into a ham-fisted cover-up, complete with a dim-witted fall guy threatened into confessing a ficticious crime of passion, but Udin's colleagues and a band of ambitious lawyers expose the plot.

The author carefully sets the scene, explaining the background to the action as he goes along. The journalistic digressions - on Javanese belief in magic, on Suharto's family dealings, on the static and corrupt nature of Indonesian "electoral" politics - are among the most interesting elements here. The bits on Indonesian police procedures, and the warped legal system are also great.

The book is most successful in explaining how an authoritarian regime like Indonesia's actually works in practice - how the benefits of power are shared out, who loses out, and how ordinary people are forced to compromise. In the Udin case, in the end, a lot of people refused to compromise. A year later - after the 1998 riots - Suharto was gone.

A remarkable story, and a cracking read.