Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash

Told in short, cinematic bursts, Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash is gloriously pulpy. Ajo Kawir, a lower-class Javanese teenage boy excited about sex, likes to spy on fellow villagers in flagrante, but one night he ends up witnessing the savage rape of a beautiful crazy woman by two policemen. Deeply traumatized, he becomes impotent. His efforts to get his virility back all fail, and Ajo Kawir turns to fighting as a way to vent his frustrations. He gets such a fearsome reputation as a brawler that he is hired to kill a thug named The Tiger, but instead Ajo Kawir falls in love with Iteung, a gorgeous female bodyguard who works for the local mafia. Alas, the course of true love never did run smooth... Fast-forward a decade. Now a truck driver, Ajo Kawir has reached a new equanimity, thinking that his penis may be trying to teach him a lesson and even consulting it in many situations as if it were his guru--love may yet triumph.

Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash shows Eka Kurniawan in a gritty, comic, pungent mode that fans of Quentin Tarantino will appreciate. But even with its liberal peppering of fights, high-speed car chases, and ladies heaving with desire, the novel continues to explore Kurniawan's familiar themes of female agency in a violent male world dominated by petty criminals and a corrupt police state.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Published: 08/01/2017
ISBN: 9780811225649
Pages: 216
Weight: 0.55lbs
Size: 7.80h x 5.30w x 0.60d

Review Citations: Library Journal Prepub Alert 03/15/2017 pg. 92
Library Journal 03/15/2017
Kirkus Reviews 07/15/2017
Library Journal 08/01/2017
Shelf Awareness 09/01/2017
Publishers Weekly 09/04/2017