The Guardian - Intan Paramaditha: 'We are always haunted by the road not taken'

Interview

Matthew Janney

The Indonesian author’s novel The Wandering allows readers to select their own path - but follows characters whose lives have often been decided for them

Fri 6 Mar 2020 01.33 AEDT
Last modified on Mon 9 Mar 2020 20.57 AEDT

‘Travel is an ancient desire’ … Intan Paramaditha.

‘Onism”, according to John Koenig’s Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows (an online “fictionary” for ineffable feelings), is “the frustration of being stuck in just one body, that inhabits only one place at a time, which is like standing in front of the departures screen at an airport, flickering over with strange place names like other people’s passwords, each representing one more thing you’ll never get to see before you die – and all because, as the arrow on the map helpfully points out, you are here.”

Indonesian author Intan Paramaditha’s recent book The Wandering, a socially observant choose-your-own adventure novel, is the epitome of onism. Structured like one of the Choose Your Own Adventure series from the 1980s and 90s that Paramaditha read as a child, this novel is no gimmicky remake or nostalgic paean. Instead, Paramaditha adapts the form to serve her subject matter: travel, around which she draws questions of mobility, agency and representation into orbit.

The Wandering is a novel more interested in the offcuts, in what – and who – get left behind in stories of travel. “We are always haunted by the question of not choosing the other path, the road not taken,” Paramaditha says. “Travelling is always about making choices, but at the same time your choices are made for you, structured by many things: nationality, class, gender, what we can access and what not. We’re walking on a map that already exists and our location on the map has been decided.”