Olenka

The first English translation of a prize-winning novel set in the American Midwest by Indonesia’s celebrated writer of absurdist realism

In Bloomington, Indiana, the indistinguishable Fanton Drummond’s life changes when he encounters Olenka Danton in an elevator. Fanton is infatuated at first sight; when Olenka reciprocates, the two begin an affair. The deeper Fanton steps into Olenka’s world — in which he learns of her artistic talent, unhappy marriage and seeming disinterest in her son — the stronger his obsession grows. But one day, Olenka vanishes. Fanton’s subsequent search for Olenka becomes an existential journey filled with tragicomic twists and introspective musings on the meaning of life, all through which Fanton realizes that he knows little about Olenka, and even less about himself.

With prose characteristic of Camus by way of Lynch, Darma foregrounds the absurd monotony of everyday life — and the meaninglessness that it masks — all through the eyes of a white male American narrator who is equal parts aware and oblivious to his insignificance, caprice, and narcissism. Olenka, newly translated into English by PEN Translation Prize winner Tiffany Tsao, captures Darma’s nuance that toes the line between realism and absurdism, the tragic and the comic, and the factual and the fictious, to blur all binaries between these notions — as well as those that separate us from others.

Budi Darma was a novelist, short-story-writer, and literary critic. Budi Darma received several national literary awards and his international honors include the Southeast Asian Writers Award (or S.E.A. Write Award) and the Mastera Literary Award. He held a PhD in English literature from the University of Bloomington, Indiana, and was a professor at the State University of Surabaya.

Tiffany Tsao (translator and introducer) is a literary translator and writer. Her translations have been awarded the PEN Presents and PEN Translates prizes. She has translated numerous Indonesian works, has written about literature in translation for Electric Literature, and is the author of The Majesties (2020), the forthcoming But Won’t I Miss Me (2026), and the Oddfits series. She holds a PhD in English literature from UC-Berkeley.