Laksmi Pamuntjak
Biography
Laksmi Pamuntjak is a bilingual novelist, poet and food writer. She has written on culture and politics for numerous publications including the Jakarta Post, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and the Guardian. Laksmi’s first bestselling novel, Amba/The Question of Red, set against the backdrop of the Indonesian anti-Communist mass killings of 1965-66, won Germany’s LiBeraturpreis in 2016 and has been translated into several languages. Laksmi was the Indonesian representative at the Poetry Parnassus, the largest poetry festival in the UK, held in conjunction with the 2012 London Olympics. In 2018, the movie adaptation of her second novel, Aruna dan Lidahnya (The Birdwoman’s Palate) won two awards at the Festival Film Indonesia. Pamuntjak’s third novel, Srikandi/The Fall Baby, was first published in German under the title Herbstkind by Ullstein Verlag in September 2018. The original English-language version has been acquired by Penguin Random House’s imprint in Asia for publication in 2019.
