<p>In the 1970s, Budi Darma - one of Indonesia''s most acclaimed writers - lived as a student in Bloomington, Indiana. His experiences formed the basis for the renowed short story collection, <i>The People from Bloomington</i>: a portrait of small-town America that offers an incisive view of the West and the people that inhabit it.<br><br>In Darma''s America, apartment blocks and gasping attic rooms shadow overgrown gardens, empty streets and distances traversable only by car. His stories circle the lonely, the unkempt, and the odd: mysterious old men and gruesomely sick poets, children with strange proportions and women waiting for letters that never arrive.<br><br>Tense, quietly surreal and always morbidly funny, <i>The People from Bloomington </i>is one of the great works of twentieth-century Indonesian literature.</p>