Eliza Vitri Handayani, From Now On Everything Will Be Different

As democratic reforms swept Indonesia in the late nineties, the nation’s young generation asked themselves: what does it mean to be free? Spanning fifteen years, this novel follows the struggles and hopes, loves and disappointments of two young Indonesians who came of age during Reformasi. Following the entwined paths of Julita and Rizky as they struggle to break free from a pattern of repeated disappointments and define themselves, Handayani presents a portrait of the changing and complex reality of contemporary Indonesia, and of the younger generation born out of revolution. From Now On Everything Will Be Different is a compelling study of freedom and love, community and conformity, told with humour, sensuality and a subtly sharp political intelligence.

“Handayani represents a new dawn of the Indonesian novel.”
—Manneke Budiman

“A finely choreographed love story that shadows the larger changes and challenges of life in contemporary Indonesia. It charts the fever and the friction of a relationship, exploring conflicted identities in a complex world, where social pressures push against emerging independence and new freedoms. Sharply designed, intoxicating, reverberant.” —Nicholas Jose

“The protagonists are complicated and full of life, a boy and a girl becoming a man and a woman, and struggling to do it with as much honesty as they can. This novel is about what it is like to come of age at the end of a revolution.” —Ruby J. Murray

“The novel is set against the uncertain politics of contemporary Indonesia, the excesses and failures of which lend a poignant urgency to the characters’ equally clumsy attempts at forging an honest and enduring relationship; as democracy goes (or remains elusive), so does love.”—Jose Dalisay Jr.

Eliza Vitri Handayani on the Ubud launch being banned and censorship in Inside Indonesia.

Eliza Vitri Handayani
FROM NOW ON EVERYTHING WILL BE DIFFERENT
160pp. ISBN 978-1-922181-47-3.  Release date October 2015. 

This is Eliza Vitri Handayani’s first novel to be published in English. She has published short stories, essays and translations in leading Indonesian literary outlets as well as in the Asia Literary Review, Griffith Review and Asymptote Journal. In 2004 she won an Anugerah Adikarya from the Indonesian Publishers Association, for best young-adult book. She is the founder of InterSastra, an Indonesian literary translation initiative.