Author Session: Isna Marifa

About the Session

“When I shut my eyes and my ears fell deaf to the sounds around me, I could visualise my old home: the rustle of the fanlike leaves of the breadfruit tree as they danced in the breeze that rolled down the dormant volcano…”

It is 1751, and nine-year-old Wulan finds herself half a world away from her home in Java: torn from her adored grandparents, her chattering cousins, the sounds and smells of the landscape that she loves. She and her father, Parto, are enslaved on a Cape Colony farmstead, with little hope of returning home. In this new world they hold fast to their Javanese identity and beliefs while, through their shared suffering, they forge bonds with the multicultural community whose descendants would come to be known as the Cape Malays.

Isna Marifa’s debut is the first novel to focus on the Indonesian experience of slavery in South Africa, illuminating this history of unfreedom through a timeless story of love, loss, and longing.

About the Author

Isna Marifa is a senior environmental specialist and author based in Jakarta, Indonesia. She did her tertiary education in the US in the mid 1908s, and returned to Indonesia and built a career as an environmental specialist. She has worked with many international and Indonesian institutions to improve policies, strategies and build institutional capacity with regards to sustainable development and environment and social safeguards.