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Tari Lang’s memoir My Neighbour, The Dictator recalls 1965 coup, growing up under Suharto’s regime
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My Neighbour, The Dictator by Tari Lang begun as a letter to her children.
PHOTOS: MONSOON BOOKS, COURTESY OF TARI LANG
SINGAPORE – “A horrible thing happened in a very big country in a corner of the universe that nobody knew about.” That is how Tari Lang describes the 1965 coup in Indonesia in a Zoom call with The Straits Times. Yet for her, it was her entire world.
Then just 14 years old, she watched helpless as her parents – a deputy minister and director of the export bureau, and an economic researcher in the foreign ministry and ghost speechwriter for President Sukarno – were dragged off and imprisoned without trial by the Suharto regime.
