Saman: representation of a minority religion in modern Indonesian literature

This essay examines elements of Christianity, a minority religion in Indonesia, as portrayed in Saman, a novel composed by Ayu Utami. Saman has been bestseller in the history of modern Indonesian literature, which is dominated by literary works with an Islamic nuance, due mainly to the fact that the majority of Indonesians are Muslims. Saman contains criticism towards Christianity, apart from other discourses, by virtue of the polysymmetrical character of literary texts. To date, there has been no discussion of the Christian aspects of this novel. Many researchers seem to have been more interested in the novel\u27s feminist discourse. This essay discusses how Saman, a novel that criticizes Christianity, became a bestseller in Indonesia, a country inhabited by a Muslinmajority. Minority religions in modern Indonesian literary discourse have not attracted much attention of researchers, be they literary critics or academics. This is due to modern Indonesian literary discourse manifesting a degree of religious exclitsivism (and ethnicism), that is not only reflected in literary criticism and literary studies but also in the writing world. Besides, this is perhaps due to the sensitivity of issues connected with clan, religion and race in Indonesia, most especially during the New Order era