Abé Sahetapy’s novel Passie, een strijd met woorden (roughly translated: Passion, a battle with words) explores the historical ties connecting Australia, Indonesia and the Netherlands through the story of a Moluccan protagonist. Published in 2025, the novel is set in Indonesia, Australia and the United States.
Plot summary
Abé Sahetapy’s novel follows Moluccan woman Ina who lives on Ceram, the largest island of Indonesia’s Maluku province. As a young girl, Ina flees Indonesia in an effort to escape the regime that oppresses her family and her people. She builds a new life for herself in Australia, trying to get away from her past.
However, even in Australia Ina can’t escape the memories from her past in Indonesia, nor news about the Moluccan people. When she receives word that both her parents have died – her father in prison and her mother shortly afterwards – Ina’s resentment and rage at her birth country only grows. Slowly, she begins to return to her past in the Indonesian archipelago, connecting with people who oppose Indonesia’s stance toward minority groups. Ina’s story reflects the novel’s theme of resistance against oppression.
The novel draws on history as much as the present, and shows how personal pasts and collective memory are interconnected. Through his book Abé Sahetapy demonstrates that words have power, and reflects on the lasting personal, historical and political connections between Indonesia, the Netherlands and Australia.
About the author
Abé Sahetapy is a writer and poet of Moluccan heritage. He was born in 1953 in camp Schattenberg, a residential camp in the Netherlands that housed thousands of Moluccans between 1950 and 1971. Sahetapy originally wrote a version of Passie, een strijd met woorden in 1982 while in detention. He began to rework this manuscript in 2018, setting the story in the present and deliberately selecting a Moluccan woman as the book’s protagonist. Passie, een strijd met woorden is Sahetapy’s eight’s book. His previous works include three novels and four poetry collections. He lives in Hoogeveen.
