Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash
Eka Kurniawan
After witnessing a violent rape, Ajo Kawir loses his ability to have sexual intercourse – even with the woman he wins for himself. His dingwallace just won’t come to the party, despite the efforts of his best friend. Will his bird ever wake up?
I can’t believe I read a novel all about one man’s inability to raise his dong. At the beginning I almost stopped reading, in fact I moved the novel into the ‘will not finish’ pile. But for some reason I then came back and finished it off. Maybe my curiosity about how Ajo Kawir was possibly going to get his pecker working again did me in.
Maybe the title lost something in translation. Yes, it’s the name of his truck, but uh, in the end, he doesn’t actually reach vengeance. And uh, most of the time no-one pays cash? Anyway, the rest of the prose was still pithy, and I commend the translator on a fantastic job.
I could have done without the ‘short cinematic bursts’. I much would have preferred if there was a nice linear story line. I expected that I would not enjoy a novel tagged pulp fiction, but it wasn’t too bad.
If you like novels where the main character is basically a Lollypop (if you know what I mean), this could be a novel for you. In hindsight, I think I shouldn’t have started reading it at all, but I did, and I finished it, so I’ll give it 3 stars.
Text Publishing | 31st July 2017 | AU$29.99 | paperback
