Erick Setiawan est un conteur dont les œuvres explorent les complexités de la psyché humaine et les tensions sociétales. Ayant grandi en Indonésie dans un climat de tension, il a trouvé du réconfort dans la littérature et le monde de l'imagination. Ses premières expériences dans des écoles catholiques et son déménagement ultérieur aux États-Unis ont façonné sa vision du monde, insufflant à sa prose une profonde compréhension. Bien qu'initialement attiré par la psychologie et l'informatique, sa passion pour l'écriture a finalement prévalu, donnant naissance à des récits qui explorent les thèmes du déracinement, de la recherche d'identité et de la résilience de l'esprit humain.
From high in the house that stands on the hill, young Meridia watches her stern father Gabriel, disappear off into a mist each night and her proud mother speaking to her pots and pans in strange language ... A haunting and mythical debut from a major new literary talent.
Erick Setiawan's richly atmospheric debut is a beautiful, engrossing fable of three generations of women in two families; their destructive jealousies, their loves and losses, their sacrifices and deeply rooted deceptions, and their triumphs. Of Bees and Mist is a fable of one woman's determination to overcome the haunting magic that is created by the people she loves and the oppressive secrets behind their broken lives. Raised in a sepulchral house where ghosts dwell in mirrors, Meridia spends her childhood feeling neglected and invisible. Every evening her father vanishes inside a blue mist without so much as an explanation, and her mother spends her days beheading cauliflowers in the kitchen. At sixteen, desperate to escape, Meridia marries a tenderhearted young man. Little does she suspect that his family is harboring secrets of their own. There is a grave hidden in the garden. There are two sisters groomed from birth to despise each other. And there is Eva, the formidable matriarch whose grievances swarm the air like an army of bees—the wickedest mother-in-law imaginable. Erick Setiawan takes Meridia on a tumultuous ride of hope and heartbreak as she struggles to keep her young family together and discovers long-kept secrets about her own past as well as the shocking truths about her husband's family.
<i>Of Bees and Mist</i> is an engrossing fable that chronicles three generations of women under one family tree and places them in a mythical town where spirits and spells, witchcraft and demons, and prophets and clairvoyance are an everyday reality. Meridia grows up in a lonely home until she falls in love with Daniel at age sixteen. Soon, they marry, and Meridia can finally escape to live with her charming husband’s family—unaware that they harbor dark mysteries of their own. As Meridia struggles to embrace her life as a young bride, she discovers long-kept secrets about her own past as well as shocking truths about her new family that push her love, courage, and sanity to the brink. Erick Setiawan’s astonishing debut is a richly atmospheric and tumultuous ride of hope and heartbreak that is altogether touching, truthful, and memorable.