Making the longlist this week for the US National Book Award for translated literature, Intan Paramaditha’s Night of a Thousand Hells is a subversive, shape-shifting novel in which family tragedy becomes political reckoning, horror exposes social violence, and familiar stories turn sinister.
Set in Indonesia, the novel opens in the aftermath of a suicide bombing by a radical group targeting places of worship and community groups. Annisa, a young mother and the youngest of three sisters, is dead, leaving her sisters, Muti and Maya, to confront the question that drives the novel: what led Annisa to get on a motorbike with a bomb strapped to her chest and why did she join this radical group intent on killing innocent men, women and children?
