People from Oetimu

“Stands out for its satirical wit. . . A humorous yet fully heartfelt depiction of life in the context of pervasive violence in Timor.” – Asymptote

A masterful literary debut for fans of Salman Rushdie, Gabriel García Márquez, and Namwali Serpell from an equally ambitious and form-breaking political writer

Combining humor and history, pathos and hijinks, this hypnotizing debut novel introduces readers to a writer at the forefront of Indonesian literature.

In 1998, men living on the border between West and East Timor are gathering at the police station to watch the World Cup. They train their eyes on Brazilian superstar Ronaldo Luiz Nazario de Lima, urging him to step it up and beat the French. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to them, political insurgents are in the process of invading the village, with plans to kill.

From there, Felix K. Nesi’s formidable debut novel cycles backward in time, to the independence movements against Portuguese rule in the 1970s, the period of Japanese occupation in the 1940s, before returning to the events of 1998. The pain of years of domination and violent conflict recurs.

Nesi’s eye for the absurd brings a levity to the text: bureaucratic acrobatics, European officials who think themselves invincible, and macho charades all get flipped on their heads. His diverse source material – articles in newspapers, fables circulated in Timor’s robust oral tradition – lend themselves to a propulsive narrative power and
an intoxicating reading experience that effortlessly captures complex historical events.

Felix K. Nesi (b. 1988) is an author from Insana in West Timor. Along with People from Oétimu, he has published a collection of short stories entitled Usaha Membunuh Sepi (2016). With the support of the Indonesian National Book Committee, he has researched Timorese slavery in the Netherlands. He is also the founder of a bookstore, a library, and the book festival Kencan Buku Fesek, all in West Timor. In 2022, Nesi was a fellow at the University of Iowa’s International Writers Program. He lives in Kupang.

Lara Norgaard is a PhD student in comparative literature at Harvard. Among other things, she writes about collective memory of state violence, leftist cultural circulation between Latin America and Southeast Asia, and histories of U.S.-backed, anti-communist military dictatorships. Her reporting alongside a team of five Brazilian reporters on forced displacements in Rio de Janeiro received the Vladimir Herzog Prize for human rights journalism.