This memoir of a family torn apart by an unthinkable betrayal lays bare an astonishing truth at the heart of an island the world cherishes as "The Last Paradise." When a young American traveler falls in love with and marries a beautiful Balinese girl, all the promise of "The Morning of the World" seems to await. But twenty years later and far too late, he discovers the awful purpose behind the elaborate Hindu ceremonies arranged by his wife at the birth of their children. While he struggles to make sense of the destruction of his family, Balinese friends warn of long-term plans, of black magic, of fraudulent documents, false Hindu ceremonies, collusion by members of the Bali community, the courts, the police, public prosecutors-even his own attorneys-in a combination known in Indonesia as a "Law Mafia." A few close Balinese friends stand with him, helping guide him through the sekala and niskala-the Balinese visible and invisible worlds-but stakes and tensions continue to rise until he faces a possibly fatal decision: dare he fight for his and his children's identities, or must he accept his friends' increasingly urgent advice to flee with his children ahead of plans for murder? The cases behind this book remain unresolved and at the center of ongoing struggles between forces of reform in Indonesia's capital of Jakarta, and the tightly-closed legal and social systems, both native and expatriate, of Bali. A website, uluwatu.com, forms an integral companion to the book. Whether read as a thriller or as a window into the fascinating and complex cultures of Indonesia, the tragedy and hope at the heart of this story propel a gripping read.

"The best book on Bali for the serious visitor…Has the freshness of personal experience."--Dr. Hildred Geertz, author of Kinship in Bali and Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University In Bali, what you see--sekala--is a colorful world of ceremony, ritual, dance, and drama. What you don't see what is occult--niskala--is the doctrine underlying the pageants, the code underlying the rites, and the magic underlying the dance. In this book, author Fred Eiseman explores both tangibles and intangibles in the realm of Balinese religion, ritual, and performing arts. The essays collected here topics ranging from Hindu mythology to modern gamelan music. Eiseman's approach is that of a dedicated reporter in love with his subject--he has the knowledge and patience to explain the near-infinite permutations of the Balinese calendar, and yet he is still moved by the majesty of the great Eka Dasa Rudra ceremony. The author's 28 years experience on the island shows and this book rewards close reading--even by the most seasoned students of Balinese culture.

Note: This title was out of print. Re-issued in its original form in 2010. The first comprehensive history of Balinese politics from the middle of the 17th century till the end of Dutch colonial rule in 1942. Based on extensive research in colonial archives in the Netherlands and Indonesia, a variety of Balinese historical narratives, interviews with former colonial officials as well as many Balinese, and fieldwork data concerning temples, rituals, and oral histories. Schulte Nordholt traces Balinese history by means of a collective biography of the Mengwi dynasty, describing the rise to power, the formation and expansion of a negara, the subsequent crises, and its fall in 1891. Between 1906 and 1942 Bali became part of the Dutch colonial state and experienced bureaucratic rule and processes that resulted in a ‘traditionalization’ of Balinese kingship and culture. The story of the Mengwi dynasty under colonial rule ended in a conflict between two factions. This conflict had an unexpected but devastating outcome.

This book covers the relationship between societies and their culture in the context of traditional settlement in Indonesia. The focus of the study is on the search for meanings of local concepts. This study reveals and analyzes the concepts concerning home and their sociocultural strategies for maintaining a sense of community and identity. In this study, identifying local concepts becomes the hallmark and the hub of analyses that explore, verify and establish relations between ideas and phenomena. Based on these relations, this study attempts to capture the reality of the local world that upholds and sustains the communities’ values, norms and principles for what they may call a homeland. The book is organized into two parts. Part I describes a cross-regional habitation in Indonesia, while Part II presents four ethnic regions of Indonesia - Sa’dan Toraja, Bali, Naga and Minangkabau. Their unique traditions, customs, beliefs and attitudes serve to provide diversity in terms of their backgrounds and lifestyles, though they share the challenge of sustaining their sense of home in the face of modernity as characterized by changes and developments toward a technologically industrialized society. The central research questions are - What is development in terms of culture and environmental sustainability? How do these communities respond to modernity?

Egocentric spatial language uses coordinates in relation to our body to talk about small-scale space ('put the knife on the right of the plate and the fork on the left'), while geocentric spatial language uses geographic coordinates ('put the knife to the east, and the fork to the west'). How do children learn to use geocentric language? And why do geocentric spatial references sound strange in English when they are standard practice in other languages? This book studies child development in Bali, India, Nepal, and Switzerland and explores how children learn to use a geocentric frame both when speaking and performing non-verbal cognitive tasks (such as remembering locations and directions). The authors examine how these skills develop with age, look at the socio-cultural contexts in which the learning takes place, and explore the ecological, cultural, social, and linguistic conditions that favor the use of a geocentric frame of reference.

This is an updated edition of the classic history of Balinese dance. Ranging from the sacred to the secular, the authors look at the many genres of the form, their description, classification, and analysis.

This historiographic study of K'tut Tantri - alias Vannen Walker, the journalist from the Isle of Man; Muriel Pearson, the unhappy wife; and Surabaya Sue, the notorious revolutionary - compares her romantic and colorful autobiography, Revolt in Paradise, with other versions of her past, including those of her fellow Bali colonists and her revolutionary comrades, as well as her foes, the Dutch, and various intelligence organizations. These alternatives accounts of her past question the image of K'tut Tantri as hero, portraying her instead as dishonest, unstable, egotistical, and immoral. Such criticisms have overshadowed proper recognition of her role in the development of modern Indonesia, both as a bohemian hotelier in between-wars Bali and later as propaganda broadcaster and adviser to Indonesian revolutionary leaders including Soekarno, Sutomo, and Syarifuddin. Focusing on the nature of biography and autobiography, this book analyses K'tut Tantri's self-defeating battle to use history - in text and film script - to define her identity and reappropriate her past. An examination of the use of ideas of "truth" and "fiction" in understanding the past leads to broader consideration of the nature of history and its uses. Finally, an attempt is made to reconcile the deconstruction of K'tut Tantri's autobiography with both an acceptance of the validity of "alternative" historical genres and an acceptance of the problems inherent in writing a history of a living person. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Timothy Lindsey is Professor of Law, Director of the Asian Law Centre, Director of the Centre for Islamic Law and Society and Federation Fellow in the Law School at the University of Melbourne.