1941, West Java. Love and revolution are in the air. And war is on its way.
Shortly before the Japanese invade, the van Hoorn family throws their famous Sinterklaas party at their tea plantation. One of their guests, Mattijs, a Dutch pilot, hopes to forge a future in the Dutch East Indies, possibly with the family’s daughter, Anna, but she is torn between her dreams of Holland and her desire to belong.
Meanwhile the housekeeper, Diah, keenly observes the goings-on around the plantation, wondering how much to tell her freedom-fighter brother. When the Japanese forces finally arrive on Java’s doorstep, they all have to make decisions that will affect the rest of their lives, especially those who must evacuate to Australia.
Sunbirds depicts the intricate web of identities and loyalties created by war and imperialism, and the heartbreaking compromises that so often ensue.
Skilfully evocative, Sunbirds kicks off with a dramatic prologue as a seaplane makes an emergency exit into the Indian Ocean as the Japanese attack in 1942. We then step back in time to our protagonist, Anna, and her privileged life at her family’s tea plantation in West Java. Mirandi Riwoe breathes a tender, complex life into her characters. She offers a sweeping yet intimate exploration of colonisation, its imperial impact and the fallout from its dissolution, exploring the ending of one world and its residue into another.
There’s a delicacy to Riwoe’s language, the nuance she provides her characters with that’s deeply moving as well as richly riveting. Riwoe’s writing continues to go from strength to strength. The 2020 Queensland Literary Award winner for Gold Mountain has also been rightfully shortlisted for the 2021 Stella Prize. Her writing is both masterful and poignant, her descriptions have the ability to tie epic emotions with surprising metaphors which, for me, take it to a level of greatness.
The majority of Sunbirds is written in the third person focusing on Anna and Diah. There are also intervals of a novelette that captivates Anna in the opening chapter. The novelette is written in the first person from the perspective of Nona Fientje de Vries and titled: ‘A Tragic Story That Really Happened in Bandoeng’ which serves to underline the complexity and cost of colonisation through the brutal experiences of Nona. It’s a wonderful structural choice that resonates with the novel’s themes and heart, showing the different destinies of the characters, and the way history has avoided and ignored the telling of colonisation experiences.
Sunbirds is a deeply complex and courageous novel, both intricate and sweeping, and excellently told with true feeling.
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