Ideology as a Transmitted Disease: the World of Asahan Alham

Abstract

Asahan Alham is an Indonesian writer who has published, under slightly different names, four books defined as belonging to different genres. Those books can be read in different ways according to the prior knowledge (or total ignorance) that one has of the author’s biography and according to the objectives and inclinations of each reader. They are books of adventures and stories of love; they are also documentary sources about various political contexts, in Indonesia, in the USSR, and in Vietnam. This article shows that the four books, beyond considerable formal differences, constitute, above all, the intimate autobiography of a man swept along in the political turmoil of Soekarno’s and Soeharto’s Indonesia, and that this autobiography is unique with respect to the norms of that genre in Indonesia. Asahan Alham has introduced fiction into all levels of his texts: his biography, the social context and his own feelings and opinions. That autobiography, the most introspective among its kind in Indonesia, records not only the factual and authentic experience of the author, but also the imaginary and fantastic world within him.