Sunbirds (Mirandi Riwoe, UQP)

In West Java, towards the end of 1941, war is looming. Whispers of a Japanese invasion weigh heavily on the minds of the van Hoorn family, who are throwing their annual Sinterklaas party at their tea plantation. To some, the impending war could be their destruction; to others, it could be their ticket to independence and freedom. Sunbirds, by Mirandi Riwoe, follows four main characters: Mattijs, a Dutch pilot with hopes of forging a future with the van Hoorns by marrying their daughter Anna; Anna herself, who is caught between the promise of her father’s Holland and her mother’s Indonesian-Chinese roots; Hermine, her troubled mother, whose life has not turned out the way she had once hoped; and Diah, the family’s housekeeper, who is torn between helping her freedom-fighter brother and loyalty towards her employers. In Sunbirds, Riwoe has crafted a stunning historical novel examining what it means to colonise and be colonised. Riwoe, whose novel Stone Sky Gold Mountain won both the 2020 Queensland Literary Award for fiction and the inaugural ARA Historical Novel Prize, tackles themes such as love, rebellion, submission, sexuality, and what it means to be torn between two worlds with stunning clarity and sensuous language. Ultimately, Riwoe does what she does best—breathes life into forgotten stories and gives a voice to the figures in the margins of them.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Chloë Cooper is a writer and librarian in Meanjin. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

Category: Reviews