Abstract

This article explores, from humanistic and sociological perspectives, how recent short stories (cerpen) in two leading Indonesian newspapers address continuing socio-political trends. An overview of developments in the short story, and how these constitute the formation of a canon where short stories published in newspapers (cerpen koran) sets the standard for the genre, ends with an analysis of a recent award-winning short story by Seno Gumira Ajidarma. That story is then linked by thematic association to short stories found in a thumbnail survey of the newspapers Kompas and Jawa Pos. The analysis reveals that those stories address the continuing trend of the rise of formal, political Islam and increasing religious intolerance. No other trend was thematised in the sample. The authors used spiritual motifs, folklore and marvellous imagery that subvert a rigid worldview in defence of tolerance, pluralism and freedom of faith. This deployment expressed a universal humanism and was in three cases set within Islamic parameters and worldviews.