Book Review Author: Andrea Hirata Published in India by Penguin , 2013 Pages: 291 Price: Rs 399 Every person has at least one story to tell: his/her own. Andrea Hirata’s debut novel, The Rainbow Troops , tells the story of the author and ten other students of a crumbling school in a poor village of the Indonesian island, Belitong. It is a story that elicits delight and tear drops at the same time. It is a story of childhood innocence, mischief and malleability as much as of the indifference of God and destiny, the indifference of life itself. The Muhammadiyah School in Belitong is a dilapidated building. A 15 year-old girl, Ibu Muslimah Hafsari (called Bu Mus by her students) has abandoned life’s enticements to join the only other teacher, an old man named Bapak Harfan Effendy Noor (Pak Harfan), in order to provide free education to the poor children on the island. The norms stipulate that t...
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