JakartaIndonesia post-Soeharto: the new military government hits overdrive with ambitious plans to construct state of the art nuclear power stations in Bali and Java. 'Jakarta' completes the trilogy series by taking us into the dangerous and corrupt world of high finance and global politics.
Indonesia post-Soeharto:
The new military government hits overdrive with ambitious plans to construct state of the art nuclear power stations in Java and Bali. But will it stop there, or will Indonesia's burgeoning nuclear potential expose the unstable region to a terrifying arms race? How will the powerful Lim family gain from the installation of the nuclear reactors, and what is the mysterious Bartlett's treacherous game?
When events spin out of control, only Michael Bradshaw can prevent global disaster.
In Jakarta, which completes his popular Indonesia trilogy, Kerry Collison takes us into a dangerous and corrupt world of high finance and global politics.
Excerpt
“Jakarta” is an eerily prescient story of an Indonesia adjusting to the post-Soeharto era under a technophile president as corrupt and nepotistic as his predecessor. There is too much history in it for its predictions not to unnerve us. The story provides an observation of the forces which motivate the military and corporate elite in Indonesia. This is a loosely woven but quickly moving series of episodes juxtaposing deep poverty, corrupt politics, conniving military officers and an opportunistic business family from the Chinese ethnic minority. It is also a story about the other great neighboring nations of India and China, and how future population explosions precipitate expansionist moves by both in the region.
The story opens with the cacophonous scene of a collapsing Jakarta share market, and powerful Salima Group Chairwoman, Madame Ruswita Salima stunned at the speed her family’s fortunes had plunged. The reader is then taken back to the matriarch’s humble and desperate origins and how, like so many hundreds of thousands of her peers, had fled to Jakarta to find work and to escape the blood-letting of the 1965 anti-communist slaughter.
Ruswita commences work as a coolie, takes evening classes and earns a position in a foreign joint venture company which falls to the mercy of the powerful Chinese magnate, Lim, whose wealth, success and security was closely tied to the president’s family. She is twice raped by the expatriate manager and falls pregnant. This becomes her secret and with her best friend and former prostitute, Lani, they convince those around them that the child born to Ruswita is, in fact, Lani’s daughter. Ruswita’s future is guaranteed when she assists deliver the failing joint venture to the Lim Group. Lim becomes more and more dependent on Ruswita whom he marries. Within a brief few years she assumes joint control of the empire.
It is during this transition that the new military government hits overdrive with ambitious plans to construct state of the art nuclear power stations in Java and Bali. The Lim Group, along with a number of vested interest parties compete for the lucrative contracts which will span years of research, design and construction.
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Winner 2016 Pacific Rim Book Festival in Science Fiction category. Honored as
