Welcome to Litsy!

It is 1751, and nine-year-old Wulan finds herself half a world away from her home in Java: torn from her adored grandparents, her chattering cousins, the sounds and smells of the landscape that she loves. She and her father, Parto, are enslaved on a Cape Colony farmstead, with little hope of returning home. In this new world they hold fast to their Javanese identity and beliefs while, through their shared suffering, they forge bonds with the multicultural community whose descendants would come to be known as the Cape Malays. “Isna Marifa has extended the geographical and emotional reach of the modern Indonesian novel. The result is an original and captivating story that has launched the career of a new and promising literary voice.” A visit to South Africa led to Isna Marifa’s commitment to telling the story of the Javanese who were taken to South Africa in the colonial era. Her début, Mountains More Ancient, is the first novel to focus on the Indonesian experience of slavery in South Africa, illuminating this history of unfreedom through a timeless story of love, loss, and longing.