Title: Winter Dreams
Subtitle: Perjalanan Semusim Ilusi
Description: Winter Dreams is Maggie Tiojakin's first novel, published a year following her second short story collection, in 2011. The book talks about issues of illegal immigration in the US and touches on subjects of identity and soul-searching journey. Written in first-person, Winter Dreams follows the journey of a young Indonesian man who ends up in Boston, Massachusetts as he struggles to define his life through relationships and the absence of a dream. It is an urban love story between man and his surroundings, man and the women he comes across, as well as man and fate. Since its publication, Winter Dreams has been recognized as a book that challenges the readers to take part in the creative process of completing the character's journey. As such, Ms. Tiojakin's unique approach in changing the landscape of Indonesian literature is celebrated by those in the industry as both ground-breaking and illuminating. Readers have placed the novel on par with JD Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies and Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. Though written in Bahasa Indonesia, Ms. Tiojakin is unafraid to mix some English into her narrative and dialogues, not to mention emulating strong dialects of Spanish-speaking US immigrants. While many have criticized Ms. Tiojakin's use of English in a book that is billed as Indonesian literature, most readers find her approach to be somewhat enlightening. Currently, two foreign publishers are planning on taking the novel to the international market, to be translated by the author herself.
Places: Boston, Jakarta
Time periods: 1999-2003