Troppo

Indonesia, November, 2004: after the Bali and Denpasar bombings; just before the Boxing Day tsunami. Penny has escaped the confines of life in Perth and gone to East Java to reconnect with the Indo of her teenage years: to drift and drink and party. She's flirting and surfing with the wild man Matt and she's also taken a job at Shane's Sumatran Oasis. The Aussie expat has a reputation as a troublemaker, and locals and bule (foreigners) alike are keen to get rid of him. Penny is pulled into a sinister world where xenophobia is on the rise and where two very different cultures will collide. A novel about how Australians see their relationship to Indonesia at a time when fundamentalism and terrorism is on the rise.