{"product_id":"people-from-bloomington-penguin-classics-9780143136606","title":"People from Bloomington Penguin Classics","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWinner of the 2023 PEN Translation Prize\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWinner of the 2023 NSW Premier’s Translation Prize\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e An eerie, alienating, yet comic and profoundly sympathetic short story collection about Americans in America by one of Indonesia’s most prominent writers, now in an English translation for its fortieth anniversary, with a foreword by Intan Paramaditha\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA Penguin Classic\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn these seven stories of \u003ci\u003ePeople from Bloomington\u003c\/i\u003e,\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eour peculiar narrators find themselves in the most peculiar of circumstances and encounter the most peculiar of people. Set in Bloomington, Indiana, where the author lived as a graduate student in the 1970s, this is far from the idyllic portrait of small-town America. Rather, sectioned into apartment units and rented rooms, and gridded by long empty streets and distances traversable only by car, it’s a place where the solitary can all too easily remain solitary; where people can at once be obsessively curious\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“First published in Indonesia 40 years ago, this story collection from celebrated author Darma gets a second life—and an English translation—as a Penguin Classic. Across seven stories set in the gridded streets and rented rooms of Bloomington, Ind., Darma’s characters navigate their morbidly funny lives in this meditation on alienation, failed connection, and the universal strangeness of the human mind.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Millions\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“Despite his assertion that that the characters from \u003ci\u003ePeople from Bloomington\u003c\/i\u003e could have been drawn from any place in the world, Darma perceived, as an outsider, an emerging attitude towards the recluses on the edges of an ordinary Midwestern city. \u003ci\u003ePeople from Bloomington\u003c\/i\u003e feels like a report from the early days of the great American unwinding of civic responsibility and sense of interconnectedness. His characters are unsettling because they are recognizable—if not in our communities, then in ourselves. Darma doesn’t let us look away.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—David Kobe,\u003ci\u003e The Rumpus\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e","brand":"Penguin Books Ltd","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48732527133015,"sku":"9780143136606","price":10.44,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780143136606.jpg?v=1719997280","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/people-from-bloomington-penguin-classics-9780143136606","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}