The Saturday Paper: Intan Paramaditha, The Wandering

March 21, 2020

Review by Cher Tan

In these uncertain times, the concept of travel is increasingly fraught. While borders were already closed for some, they have been further tightened in the wake of a global pandemic. But depending on who you are and the passport you hold, the prospect of holidaying overseas is still an option. Some nationalities are allowed entry past certain borders; others are not – pointing to larger questions around the privilege and luxury of travel.

Conversely, within the context of travel lie internment, exile, unbelonging, rootlessness – the many borders and boundaries that demarcate not only territories on a map, but also the axes of power that define global centres and freedom of movement. The stark delineations between terms such as “tourist”, “expat”, “refugee” and “migrant” drive this home. At what point does one stop being a “tourist” to become a “digital nomad”? Who is deemed an “expat” while others are regarded as “immigrants”? And why is there often a distinction between “migrant” and “refugee”?

Many travel-themed books engage with daydreams of adventure, a journey that centres the self in a way that rarely considers how that same self is regarded in relation to the people it encounters. Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, to name two examples, see their protagonists grappling with a crisis of identity and lack of purpose. In these stories, the flâneur’s prerogative trumps all. The places they explore willingly open up for them, the inhabitants merely there to prop up a grand tale of self-discovery. In the end, the hero stumbles on a universal moral truth.

But Intan Paramaditha’s debut novel, The Wandering, takes this escapist impulse and turns it into a tale of limits. The book has 15 time lines, its form inspired by the young-adult Choose Your Own Adventure books: the choices the reader makes determine the course of the narrative, much like in life itself. Originally written in Indonesian in 2017 and translated for the first time into English by Stephen J. Epstein, The Wandering employs the second person – a move often considered gauche or difficult to pull off in fiction – to great effect. In another person’s hands the prose could be trite or stilted, but Epstein’s translation pulls the reader in, complementing the narrative’s dreamlike character.