Shahnon Ahmad

RSJ benar-benar merupakan karya besar Shahnon malahan salah satu karya besar sastera melayu.

Membaca novel ini membuatkan saya terpegun dengan kekuatan bahasanya. Penggunaan bahasa daerah benar-benar mewujudkan impak real terhadap perwatakan watak-wataknya.

Walaupun banyak peristiwa dalam novel ini (cth serangan ketam, serangan tiak dsbnya) adalah gambaran kesengsaraan petani yang dihiperbolakan, namun mesej asalnya tentang kemiskinan petani dan takat kekuatan mental perempuan melayu dalam masyarakat petani itu sangat real dan mendalam.

Ssatu lagi buku Shahnon yang mempunyai kekuatan penceritaan setara dengan novel ini saya kira 'Strengenge'.

Must read!
… (mais)

I forgot that I did technically finish this book some weeks back. I saw this book in one of the booth at a flea market. It was a worn copy and there are a lot of pages highlighted by its past owner but it was a short reading experience. I did speed read through thinking about purchasing and apparently I didn't need to.

As much as satires goes, it wasn't subtle. It wasn't clever nor was it funny nor was it deep. It was plain shit. Every paragraphs seem to accompanied with some form of excrement in one way or another. When the book rounded up to explain itself its meaning without bothering to create a structured content, I wonder why it was published in the first place. For all its content, the book does reflect the childish self-destructive nature of the nation's politics particularly the drama between opposition and the current government down to the favourite labels attached to them. Consider Anwar's "I wanna be an MB" fiasco, this book is still relevant to reflect the current political state despite its being obvious juvenile rant against Dr M some twenty years ago.

Coming from an established writer who is a functioning adult, surprisingly the content was deary and riddled with adolescent angst. It was dead juvenile and for a sarcastic person such as me, if I were to write the book with the specific theme in mind, I could summed everything up in one paragraph with 140 characters with full of f-words and publish everything for free. If I was that conventional politically-oriented that is. But you pay for this shit... err.. overrated much?

All form of politics are corrupt in one way or another, its just groups of socially-influential people financially invested in governance. Unless we have a digitized incorruptible utopian government, the chances to get a completely virginal governance with naive outlook will stretch near to impossible. The book might amuse itself being constipated with some controversial elements worth having exploding diarrhea over, it is still a show of literary irritable bowel syndrome.

Keep on dreaming things that all of this will change in this lifetime with some provocative players in line. But fact is, we're still afraid of change and the new players replacing them are more likely similar as the others before them. What everyone need is a gastric lavage and an enema.… (mais)