Genderang Perang dari Wamena (1972) by Djokolelono: An Indonesian Children Fantasy #NovNov25

🥁 I have unexpectedly found this treasure while idly browsing through Google Playbook titles. It's a children fantasy novella by an Indonesian writer: Djokolelono. It has never been translated, so if you don't understand Indonesian, I can give you only my loose translation of the title. Genderang means drum; perang is war, and Wamena is a district in Papua. The story is told from point of view of two eleven-year-old boys: Adi and Yun (short of Yunanto). It's not clear where they live, but it is set in the 1970s. My guess is that they live in a small town. Adi has been living in the Netherlands; his father worked in a Dutch museum, and the family have only recently moved permanently to Indonesia. 

🥁 Yun is playing at his new friend Adi's, and it is a gloomy rainy day. They can't play outside, so Adi suggests they rummage at the backyard shed. One might find interesting stuffs in the shed - don't we know it! And they do! Opening a box in which Adi's father kept stuffs from the museum, they found a little drum. It's a traditional music instrument from Papua which is usually called tifa. Playfully one of them starts to beat it, and a strange thing happens. The player can't stop beating the drum, his hand goes faster and faster, while the other can't stop dancing on the tune. Then a white mist fills the shed, and the shed suddenly turns into a jungle. The boys are time-travelling to the jungle of Wamena in Papua, in the 18th century, following a Dutch expedition consisting of four white men and some locals.  

🥁 One of the Dutch men who was called Tristan van Allen, had stolen a drum, or tifa, a precious thing belonging to the chief of the tribe. The expedition leader told him to return it, as it would put the whole expedition in danger, but Tristan was adamant. Adi found from his father that the tifa came to his possession after being found years later by another group visiting Wamena, while the faith of the expedition itself was never revealed; they had just vanished. And now Adi and Yun are about to solve the mystery, as the tifa slowly reveals its history whenever the boys playing it. But it's not just a mystery, there's something menacing inside the tifa....

🥁 It was an exciting adventure to read! I kept forgetting that Adi and Yun are just elementary school students, they somehow sound more mature to me - like 17 or 18 years old boy, perhaps? Anyway, I was more interested in their one quarrel (the tifa foreshadows what's about to come; on the day the expedition members quarreled for instance, Adi and Yun quarrel too). The topic is about Dutch colonialism over Indonesia. Yun is expressing his hatred to the greedy Dutch, but Adi, who had been brought up in Netherlands, is saying that not all Dutch people are greedy, and that colonialism happens only when the locals aren't smart enough to detect their false politeness. This infuriates Yun, as his friend's implying that Indonesian are dumb. Well, I couldn't but pondering a lot about it afterwards, because it makes sense. And why the writer put it as the cause of quarrel? It might be a boyish quarrel (they are friends again the day after), but that was too serious a topic for a children read, don't you think? Anyway, this has been a fun read for me, and I can't wait to read more of the series. This novella is the sixth book from Weird and Wicked series, by the way.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Novellas in November 2025

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