People from Oetimu

Nesi makes his English-language debut with this arresting portrait of violence in East Timor. The recursive narrative begins and ends in July 1998 on the night of the World Cup final between Brazil and France, which Sergeant Ipi has invited the men of Oetimu, a village on the border of East and West Timor, to watch at the local police station. From the novel’s first line, the reader learns Ipi’s friend Martin Kabiti’s house will be raided by murderers bent on vengeance against the veteran anti-insurgent mercenary, but in the chapters that follow, Nesi rewinds to focus on individual characters in Oetimu and the tangled politics of the region. There’s Maria, who believes the Indonesian military, Catholic church, and government are “fundamentally criminal,” and had an affair with Yosef, now a priest, while he was in the seminary. Later, Father Yosef is caught kissing the widowed Maria after a military convoy carelessly runs over her husband and son. Distraught, Yosef accepts a position at Saint Helena High School on the periphery of Kupang, where he becomes a mentor to the beautiful Silvy, who gets engaged to Ipi after she moves to Oetimu. Though the pace sometimes drags, Nesi seamlessly weaves the lives of his characters together, and he succeeds at providing complex historical context to the culminating scene of carnage at Martin’s house. The result is a potent and shocking tale of postcolonial depravity. (Feb.)