Indonesian Non-Fiction Books

English-language books about Indonesia run from serious history to first-hand reportage to the occasional drug-smuggling memoir. Below is a working list, grouped by subject and reviewed briefly and without deference. The list is current as of 2026; the older titles stay because nothing has bettered them.

Where to buy them

Imported English books are not hard to find, but they are dear: reckon on IDR 400,000 to 500,000 for a paperback that would cost a fraction of that abroad. Periplus (founded 1985) runs the largest chain, with 45-plus mall and airport outlets plus an online store, and is the most reliable local source. Kinokuniya keeps sizeable English sections in its flagship branches; Gramedia, the dominant domestic chain, carries a smaller English selection in its larger stores. In Bali, the Ganesha Bookshop in Ubud (trading since 1986) specialises in Indonesia titles. The travelling Big Bad Wolf warehouse sale, ten years running here and with a fourteen-city 2026 tour announced, dumps imported books at IDR 80,000 to 100,000. For Indonesian literature in English translation, go to the Lontar Foundation; publishers Monsoon Books and Tuttle sell direct. The pre-1900 classics below are out of copyright and free at archive.org.

History & politics

Indonesia, Etc.: Exploring the Improbable Nation
Elizabeth Pisani (W. W. Norton) 2014
Part travelogue, part current affairs across 26,000 miles of the archipelago. The best single introduction to the modern nation.

Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World
David Van Reybrouck (The Bodley Head) 2024
Sweeping narrative history of the independence revolution; shortlisted for the 2024 Baillie Gifford Prize and genuinely gripping.

The Killing Season: A History of the Indonesian Massacres, 1965–66
Geoffrey B. Robinson (Princeton University Press) 2018
The definitive scholarly account of the mass killings: perhaps half a million dead, more than a million detained.

The Jakarta Method
Vincent Bevins (PublicAffairs) 2020
How Washington's part in the 1965 slaughter became a template exported around the world. Essential and grim.

Man of Contradictions: Joko Widodo and the Struggle to Remake Indonesia
Ben Bland (Penguin / Lowy Institute) 2020
A concise, clear-eyed biography of the president who led the country for a decade before leaving office in 2024.

Planning Indonesia's New Capital City: Behind Nusantara
Delik Hudalah (Routledge) 2025
A serious study of the politics behind the capital's move to Nusantara, now designated the "political capital" and targeted for 2028 — though at the time of writing Jakarta remains the legal capital and the transfer decree is unsigned.

Raffles and the British Invasion of Java
Tim Hannigan (Monsoon Books) 2012
Recasts the sainted Thomas Stamford Raffles in a considerably darker light.

Pretext for Mass Murder
John Roosa (University of Wisconsin Press) 2006
Sheds light on the botched 1965 coup that let Soeharto oust Soekarno and massacre the left.

Suharto: A Political Biography
R. E. Elson (Cambridge University Press) 2001
Scholarly life of Indonesia's longest-serving ruler.

Soeharto: My Thoughts, Words and Deeds
As told to G. Dwipayana and Ramadhan K.H. (Citra Lamtoro Gung Persada) 1991
The dictator's own account. Marvel as he takes credit for extra-judicial killings and praises his children's business skills.

Sukarno: An Autobiography
As told to Cindy Adams (Bobbs-Merrill) 1965
Self-serving, but it deepens the picture of both the man and the country.

A Nation in Waiting: Indonesia's Search for Stability
Adam Schwarz (Westview / Routledge) 1994
Indonesia through the 1990s and Soeharto's fall. The fully updated second edition (2000) remains the latest.

The Decline of Constitutional Democracy in Indonesia
Herbert Feith (Cornell University Press) 1962
The definitive study of Indonesia's 1950s experiment with liberal democracy; reprinted by Equinox (2006).

A History of Modern Indonesia Since c. 1200
M. C. Ricklefs (Macmillan) 1981; 4th ed. Stanford University Press, 2008
The standard survey, eight centuries deep. The fourth edition (2008) is the last: Ricklefs died in 2019.

Conflict, intelligence & the military

In the Time of Madness
Richard Lloyd Parry (Jonathan Cape) 2005
A journalist inside the violence of 1998 and the abdication of President Soeharto.

Indonesia's Secret War in Aceh
John Martinkus (Random House) 2004
A disturbing exposé of military brutality in Aceh, before the 2004 tsunami forced a peace process.

A Dirty Little War
John Martinkus (Random House) 2001
The military's savagery around East Timor's 1999 independence referendum.

INTEL: Inside Indonesia's Intelligence Service
Ken Conboy (Equinox) 2004
The many incarnations of the state intelligence apparatus and some of its operations.

Kopassus: Inside Indonesia's Special Forces
Ken Conboy (Equinox) 2003
Origins and operations of the Army's feared Special Forces. Stops at 1993.

Religion & the politics of Islam

The Call: Inside the Global Saudi Religious Project
Krithika Varagur (Columbia Global Reports) 2020
Saudi-funded Salafi proselytising, and it opens in Indonesia.

Piety and Public Opinion: Understanding Indonesian Islam
Pepinsky, Liddle and Mujani (Oxford University Press) 2018
How religion actually shapes the political behaviour of ordinary Indonesian Muslims.

My Friend the Fanatic: Travels with a Radical Islamist
Sadanand Dhume (Skyhorse Publishing) 2009
An Indian atheist journalist travels Indonesia with a radical Muslim friend.

Travel & adventure

Crazy Little Heaven: An Indonesian Journey
Mark Heyward (Transit Lounge) 2013
An Australian teacher on twenty years of life in Indonesia.

Toraja
Nigel Barley (Monsoon Books) 2013
A British anthropologist's occasionally humorous recollections of Sulawesi.

The Airmen and the Headhunters
Judith Heimann (Mariner Books) 2009
American airmen shot down over Borneo in the Second World War, kept from starvation and capture by friendly Dayaks.

Throwim Way Leg
Tim Flannery (Text Publishing) 1998
A scientist's expeditions across the Indonesian half of New Guinea — formerly Irian Jaya, since the 2022 reorganisation split into six provinces — and Papua New Guinea.

The Open Cage
Daniel Start (HarperCollins) 1997
First-hand account of British and Indonesian zoologists taken hostage in the Papuan highlands in 1995.

An Empire of the East: Travels in Indonesia
Norman Lewis (Picador) 1995
A fine writer casts a cold eye over Soeharto's Indonesia.

Stranger in the Forest: On Foot Across Borneo
Eric Hansen (Houghton Mifflin) 1988
A wonderful account of a trek across Malaysian and Indonesian Borneo.

Ring of Fire: An Indonesian Odyssey
Lorne and Lawrence Blair (Bantam) 1988
Two brothers spend a decade in Indonesia's remotest corners.

Into the Heart of Borneo
Redmond O'Hanlon (Salamander Press) 1984
A hilarious and educational journey into Kalimantan.

Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded
Simon Winchester (Penguin) 2004
The 1883 eruption, its science and its aftermath.

The early classics

The Malay Archipelago
Alfred Russel Wallace (Macmillan) 1869
A classic of scientific travel by the man who gave his name to Wallace's Line. In print via Penguin Classics, with an annotated NUS Press edition for serious readers.

Java; or, How to Manage a Colony
J. W. B. Money (Hurst and Blackett) 1861
An Englishman studies Dutch-run Java to advise the British on India. Vivid on Batavia and Java of yore.

The Conquest of Java
Major William Thorn (T. Egerton) 1815
A soldier of empire on the people, culture and wildlife of Java and other islands.

Memoir & captivity

The Mute's Soliloquy
Pramoedya Ananta Toer (Hyperion) 1999
Prison memoir by Indonesia's finest writer, from his years of exile on Buru Island. A triumph of spirit over oppression; available from the Lontar Foundation.

Revolt in Paradise
K'tut Tantri (Heinemann) 1960
A Scottish-American woman recounts her part in the independence struggle and her imprisonment by the Japanese.

The Romance of K'tut Tantri and Indonesia
Tim Lindsey (OUP) 1997
An enthralling examination of how much fiction the same woman wove into the story of her own life.

Letters of a Javanese Princess
Raden Adjeng Kartini (Duckworth & Co) 1921
The correspondence of a girl who longed to escape the confines of the Javanese aristocracy and free its women.

Hell's Prisoner
Christopher V. V. Parnell (Mainstream Publishing) 2003
Doing time in an Indonesian jail for drug smuggling is no fun, least of all with a big ego.

Bali

Bali Raw
Malcolm Scott (Monsoon Books) 2012
An Australian man's tedious catalogue of violence, sex, drugs and scams in Bali.

Hotel Kerobokan
Kathryn Bonella (Pan Macmillan Australia) 2009
Grim tales of the sex, drugs, violence and corruption inside Bali's notorious jail.

A House in Bali
Colin McPhee (J. Day Co.) 1947
A Canadian composer falls for Balinese culture and music.

Jakarta

Greetings from Jakarta: Postcards of a Capital 1900–1950
Scott Merrillees (Equinox) 2012
A fascinating look at what the city used to be.

Culture Shock! Jakarta
Terry Collins and Derek Bacon (Marshall Cavendish) 2007
Indispensable for anyone mystified by the whole Jakarta experience.

Jakarta Undercover
Moammar Emka (Monsoon Books) 2005
An exposure of the many forms of sex-for-sale, and sex-for-free, in the capital.

The Invisible Palace
Jose Manuel Tesoro (Equinox) 2004
The compelling true story of a journalist murdered after exposing corruption in Yogyakarta's Bantul regency.

Culture, language & the unexplained

Jamu: The Ancient Indonesian Art of Herbal Healing
Susan-Jane Beers (Tuttle) 2012
An Irishwoman sings the praises of traditional potions for health, beauty and sexual prowess.

Kretek
Mark Hanusz (Equinox) 2000
A lavishly illustrated history of Indonesia's ubiquitous clove cigarette. Equinox's very first title.

Invisible People
Irfan Kortschak (Lontar) 2010
Superbly illustrated stories of poor, marginalised Indonesians and how they survive.

The Magus of Java: Teachings of an Authentic Taoist Immortal
Kosta Danaos (Inner Traditions) 2000
Some people mistake conjuring tricks for evidence of supernatural powers.

Contributor: tupai

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