Surabaya, awal tahun 1900-an, di Jalan Peneleh Gang VII ada sebuah rumah yang dihuni sejumlah anak muda pembentuk sejarah bangsa ini. Rumah itu menjadi saksi bagaimana H.O.S Tjokroaminoto, sang Raja Jawa Tanpa Mahkota, menggembleng anak-anak kosnya dalam perjuangan melawan penjajahan. Para muridnya itu adalah Soekarno, Musso, dan Kartosoewirjo. Dari Tjokroaminoto, ketiganya belajar tentang kemerdekaan, kebebasan, dan ideologi dalam berbangsa. Ketiganya bersahabat dan saling mendukung. Namun, sejarah berkata lain. Ketiga murid kesayangan Tjokroaminoto ini harus berpisah jalan. Mereka menempuh jalan sesuai kata hati masing-masing. Sebuah persimpangan yang akhirnya membawa mereka kembali dalam sebuah pertemuan berdarah. Perselisihan paham yang membuat sahabat harus saling menumpas. Seteru 1 Guru, novel tentang pergulatan sejarah anak bangsa, Soekarno, Musso, dan Kartosoewirjo. Tentang bagaimana ketiga sahabat satu perguruan itu harus berpisah jalan demi keyakinan yang berbeda. Tentang bagaimana sebuah bangsa merdeka harus dibangun dengan darah dan air mata. "Novel Seteru 1 Guru ini patut dibaca sebagai kunci pembuka ke arah penziarahan sejarah bangsa." -Yudi Latif, cendekiawan [Mizan, Qanita, Soekarno, Musso, Kartosoewirjo, Novel, Sejarah, Indonesia]
Semboyan 'Stop The War In Indonesia' dalam lima bahasa—Inggris, Prancis,
Rusia, Cina, dan Arab—terpampang di jalan-jalan dan lapangan-lapangan,”
kenang Soeripno. Ketika berangkat ke Praha, Soeripno juga membawa mandat
penuh ...
Maya Herman In Search of The Silk King A Novel Among many stories I heard in Southeast Asia, the most fascinating is the story of the legendary American “silk king” of Thailand – Jim Thompson. It is as mysterious as Asia itself. The name Jim Thompson seemed to follow me from the first moment I arrived in Bangkok. The more stories and rumors I heard, the more I became fascinated by them. They had all the ingredients of a good novel or a major movie – romance, mystery, glamour, exotic locations, and more. The legend of the “silk king” and his disappearance remains as mysterious today as it was in 1967. No clues were ever found. Only unanswered questions remained. Using poetic license, I decided to write a novel that might answer some of them. As such, the novel is very loosely and only in part based on the real life of Jim Thompson, as I learned of it primarily through living in Bangkok, traveling extensively throughout Southeast Asia and writing about it in my book of travel essays, The Jade Window (Bangkok, 1998). It is also in part based on the information I gathered in my research from the newspaper articles on Thompson, William Warren’s indispensable biography of him, on the interviews with Warren and Henry Thompson, through Alexander Macdonald’s notes and OSS archives, for all of which I am immensely grateful. Still, my “Jim Thompson”is not a historic but a fictional character. In Search of The Silk King is a work of fiction written in many voices that are tempered with the measure of truth. Any errors – biographical, historical, intended, or otherwise - are solely mine. This is the story of an adventure told in hero’s voice and in various voices of the people who knew him. It is also the story of his life that had the sweep of a historical romance and the power of a heroic quest. As Jim Thompson’s absorbing tale unfolds, the reader discovers what happened after his disappearance, how he succeeded and suffered and eventually found the truth. It is a novel of suspense, of fate and love lost and found. The “Jim Thompson” of my novel thinks of himself as an ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances. There are, on the tapes he sent from his after-life in exile to a journalist friend, his memories of the past: his childhood desire to travel to exotic places ... of his first and greatest love, of his marriage. As a young man, Jim went to New York and worked as an architect. He met Vera, a Russian ballerina, and fell in love with her. He gave her a brooch designed as a pair of ballet slippers made of emeralds and diamonds as a token of his great love. When Vera decided to go back to her old lover she returned one of the two slippers. Jim kept the slipper as the memento of his love that would prove to be fatal. After the breakup, Jim tried to find a new direction in life. He married a woman he barely knew and enlisted in the Army. This was his way of escaping the loss of his first great love that would mark his whole emotional life. He went to Africa where he worked for the OSS with Maurice, a half-French, half-Laotian mystery man. Not eager to return home, Jim volunteered to go to Southeast Asia. This was the real beginning of his journey. He fell in love with Bangkok and wanted to stay there even after the war was over. His wife Pat did not share his enthusiasm and agreed to a divorce. Jim returned to Bangkok with a plan to renovate the Oriental hotel. He did not succeed in that, but found his true vocation in a forgotten art of silk making. Jim almost single-handedly revived the Thai silk industry and became the most successful American businessman in Thailand. There is a story about silk. Jim’s life seemed full. He built a beautiful house and opened a new store. He seemed to have finally found his fulfillment. He had a beautiful young mistress, Nicole, and seemed
she danced. She wore a dress of dark green silk – it was a sari that she had
made into a dress. It revealed her delicate neck. It matched the color of her big
eyes. I longed to touch her neck. I came over, leaned over to be closer to her
neck.
Winner of the Man Booker Prize “Nothing since Cormac McCarthy’s The Road has shaken me like this.” —The Washington Post From the author of the acclaimed Gould’s Book of Fish, a magisterial novel of love and war that traces the life of one man from World War II to the present. August, 1943: Australian surgeon Dorrigo Evans is haunted by his affair with his uncle’s young wife two years earlier. His life, in a brutal Japanese POW camp on the Thai-Burma Death Railway, is a daily struggle to save the men under his command. Until he receives a letter that will change him forever. A savagely beautiful novel about the many forms of good and evil, of truth and transcendence, as one man comes of age, prospers, only to discover all that he has lost.
... spurted piss and semen all the same. During his trial, Choi Sang-min became
aware of many things—the Geneva convention, chains of command, Japanese
military structure and so on—about which he had hitherto only the vaguest idea.
