Putu Wijaya

Early life Wijaya is the youngest of eight siblings (three of them from a different father). He lived in a large housing complex with around 200 people who were all members of the same extended family, and were accustomed to reading. His interest in literature came not from his immediate family but his extended family, and as a primary school student, he read classics like Anton Chekhov and William Shakespeare. Within five years his essays and stories were being published in Minggu Pagi (Sunday Morning) and Majalah Djawa (Java Magazine). Written in 1972, the play tells the story of how a group of people react to the intrusion of a stranger into their lives. His short stories often appear in the columns of the daily newspapers Kompas and Sinar Harapan, and he has been called "The Father of Short Stories". His novels are also often published in the magazines Kartini, Femina and Horison. As a script writer, he has twice won the Citra Award at the Indonesian Film Festival, for the movies Perawan Desa (1980) and Kembang Kertas (1985). They were staged in Madison, Wisconsin and the production of Roar was brought to the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York City. His writing has been translated into Japanese, Arabic and Thai as well as English. His novel Telegram was one of the first ten novels to be included in the series, and marks the first time this novel has been translated into English. ==Selected works==