People from Oetimu - by Felix Nesi (Paperback)

About the Book

"In 1998, men living on the border between West and East Timor are gathering at the police station to watch the World Cup. They train their eyes on Brazilian superstar Ronaldo Luiz Nazario de Lima, urging him to step it up and beat the French. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to them, political insurgents are in the process of invading the village, with plans to kill. From there, Felix K. Nesi's formidable debut novel cycles backward in time, to the independence movements against Portuguese rule in the 1970s, the period of Japanese occupation in the 1940s, before returning to the events of 1998. The pain of years of domination and violent conflict recurs."--Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

"Stands out for its satirical wit. . . A humorous yet fully heartfelt depiction of life in the context of pervasive violence in Timor." - Asymptote

A masterful literary debut for fans of Salman Rushdie, Gabriel García Márquez, and Namwali Serpell from an equally ambitious and form-breaking political writer

Combining humor and history, pathos and hijinks, this hypnotizing debut novel introduces readers to a writer at the forefront of Indonesian literature.

In 1998, men living on the border between West and East Timor are gathering at the police station to watch the World Cup. They train their eyes on Brazilian superstar Ronaldo Luiz Nazario de Lima, urging him to step it up and beat the French. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to them, political insurgents are in the process of invading the village, with plans to kill.

From there, Felix K. Nesi's formidable debut novel cycles backward in time, to the independence movements against Portuguese rule in the 1970s, the period of Japanese occupation in the 1940s, before returning to the events of 1998. The pain of years of domination and violent conflict recurs.

Nesi's eye for the absurd brings a levity to the text: bureaucratic acrobatics, European officials who think themselves invincible, and macho charades all get flipped on their heads. His diverse source material - articles in newspapers, fables circulated in Timor's robust oral tradition - lend themselves to a propulsive narrative power and
an intoxicating reading experience that effortlessly captures complex historical events.

Review Quotes

"For a novel engaged with the tangled postcolonial history of the island of Timor--and with how myths are made--People from Oetimu is remarkably direct. In a vigorous, no-nonsense style, Felix K. Nesi delivers horror, violence, and absurdity in equal measure and with intimate immediacy. Once it is all sprinkled with that wry black humor, you end up with a definite page-turner."--Angel Igov

"A spirited and moving takedown of colonialisms Portuguese, Japanese, and Indonesian, this novel from East Timor reinvents political literature for the 21st century."--Siddhartha Deb

"The ingredients of good storytelling--a sharp sense of humor, subtlety, and social critique--all appear organic in People from Oetimu. The writer deftly and accurately depicts the culture and everyday lives of people in Timor."--Judges of the 2018 Jakarta Arts Council's best book of the year award

"An extraordinary novel. Told through dark humor, it is a story of conflict and the depravity of war in East Timor, of sex and sopi, of religion and the state . . . Reading this book makes me all the more convinced that historians are nothing more than failed novelists."--Andi Achdian, Professor of Indonesian Political History, Universitas Nasional

"Controversial, wry, and insanely readable, Felix K. Nesi's People from Oetimu made him an overnight sensation. Hailing from the war-ravaged island of Timor, the novel recounts the misadventures of a town torn apart by corruption, blind ambition, and violence as told through the myopic eyes of its inhabitants. But don't let the serious subject matter fool you. Nesi laces his book with black humor and satire, treating its subject and cast of misfits with as much disdain as sympathy. In his dark little corner of the world, no one is truly innocent, yet neither are they truly at fault. The truth lies somewhere in the grey zone, and you have to push more than you thought possible to get there"--Raka Ibrahim, The Jakarta Post

"The center of Nesi's wide-ranging debut novel is a police station on the border between East and West Timor, where a group of men have gathered to watch the final of the 1998 World Cup while a political insurgency stirs without. Nesi, in English translation here for the first time, circles this moment broadly, reaching back to the various colonialist projects that have shaped Timor and the lives of his characters."--Jonathan Frey, The Millions Winter 2025 Most Anticipated list

"[Felix Nesi] possesses a subtle, liberating humour that not only makes the terror, the omnipresent violence and the miseries of everyday life [in People from Oetimu] bearable, but also has an almost salutary, even conciliatory character, without ever allowing the criticism of existing misery to degenerate into petty grumbling. It is this that makes Nesi's novel not only a special, but above all a universal work." -- Axel Timo Purr, Literatur Review

About the Author

Felix K. Nesi (b. 1988) is an author from Insana in West Timor. Along with People from Oétimu, he has published a collection of short stories entitled Usaha Membunuh Sepi (2016). With the support of the Indonesian National Book Committee, he has researched Timorese slavery in the Netherlands. He is also the founder of a bookstore, a library, and the book festival Kencan Buku Fesek, all in West Timor. In 2022, Nesi was a fellow at the University of Iowa's International Writers Program. He lives in Kupang.

Lara Norgaard is a PhD student in comparative literature at Harvard. Among other things, she writes about collective memory of state violence, leftist cultural circulation between Latin America and Southeast Asia, and histories of U.S.-backed, anti-communist military dictatorships. Her reporting alongside a team of five Brazilian reporters on forced displacements in Rio de Janeiro received the Vladimir Herzog Prize for human rights journalism.