Book Club - Mirandi Riwoe's Sunbirds

Final Draft - Great Conversations

Mirandi Riwoe is an acclaimed author of historical fiction. Her novel Stone Sky Gold Mountain won the 2020 Queensland Literary Award. Mirandi’s new novel Sunbirds.

In the shadow of war a wealthy Dutch family celebrate on their tea plantation. The war has not yet touched their wealth and status but on this fateful night the players will be assembled who represent the future of their colonial endeavor.

Anna is the daughter of the house and finds it both her world and something of a prison. With her hopes of finishing her education in Europe dashed by the war she has little to look forward to.

Mattijs is a handsome Dutch pilot in search of adventure. With his homeland torn asunder by war he looks to the colonies for his fortune.

Sigit has enjoyed an education in Europe thanks to the benevolence of Anna’s family, but he has returned with ideas that perhaps he and his people should be able to work their land for themselves and not for foreign overseers

As Anna enjoys her father’s position of privilege she must also duck her mothers remonstrations that she not behave like a local girl. Her history has one foot in Java and the other in Holland and this tears her between her family's past and ties her to the future of the people around her…

Sunbirds begins in the closing days of 1941 as occupied Indonesia (then the Dutch East Indies) fears the arrival of Japanese troops.

Within the Van Hoorn household the relatively recent history of their possession of the land makes them jealous of maintaining it both against invading forces and internal agitators for independence.

The narrative centers Anna as the daughter of a Dutch father and Indonesian mother. As their homes are threatened, she is confronted by the truth of her heritage and the confusion of pride and shame she must navigate to come to some sort of identity.

Anna finds in Mattijs the perfect vision of the Europe she may never truly get to discover. He offers her possibility and adventure; a veritable hero who can fly her away from it all.

Through Sigit, Anna is offered a chance to discover a part of herself long hidden and shamed. He confronts her with the injustice of her current life whilst offering a vision of freedom outside of colonial rule.

The novel builds this love triangle even as the war draws closer, teasing us with the inevitability of a history that has already come to pass.

In Sunbirds Mirandi Riwoe builds a stunning ensemble cast that allow her to explore the social and political movements of this turbulent time in world and Indonesian history. The novel foreshadows the coming Indonesian independence movement even as it highlights postcolonial politics that continue to grip our world today.

Sunbirds is a compelling story; adventure and romance, historical and yet strikingly politically relevant.

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