Seratus Kalimat Pembuka Novel Terbaik Versi American Book Review

100 Best First Lines from Novels 1. Call me Ishmael. —Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851) 2. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813) 3. A screaming comes across the sky. —Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (1973) 4. Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. —Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967; trans. Gregory Rabassa) 5. Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. —Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955) 6. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. —Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1877; trans. Constance Garnett) 7. riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. —James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939) 8. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. —George Orwell, 1984 (1949) 9. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. —Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859) 10. I am an invisible man. —Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952) 11. The Miss Lonelyhearts of the New York Post-Dispatch (Are you in trouble?—Do-you-need-advice?—Write-to-Miss-Lonelyhearts-and-she-will-help-you) sat at his desk and stared at a piece of white cardboard. —Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts (1933) 12. You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. —Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) 13. Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested. —Franz Kafka, The Trial (1925; trans. Breon Mitchell) 14. You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. —Italo Calvino, If on a winter's night a traveler (1979; trans. William Weaver) 15. The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. —Samuel Beckett, Murphy (1938) 16. If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. —J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951) 17. Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo. —James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) 18. This is the saddest story I have ever heard. —Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (1915) 19. I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost:—Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me. —Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (1759–1767) 20. Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. —Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (1850) 21. Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. —James Joyce, Ulysses (1922) 22. It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. —Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830) 23. One summer afternoon Mrs. Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary. —Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) 24. It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not. —Paul Auster, City of Glass (1985) 25. Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. —William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (1929) 26. 124 was spiteful. —Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987) 27. Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing. —Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605; trans. Edith Grossman) 28. Mother died today. —Albert Camus, The Stranger (1942; trans. Stuart Gilbert) 29. Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu. —Ha Jin, Waiting (1999) 30. The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. —William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984) 31. I am a sick man . . . I am a spiteful man. —Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground (1864; trans. Michael R. Katz) 32. Where now? Who now? When now? —Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable (1953; trans. Patrick Bowles) 33. Once an angry man dragged his father along the ground through his own orchard. "Stop!" cried the groaning old man at last, "Stop! I did not drag my father beyond this tree." —Gertrude Stein, The Making of Americans (1925) 34. In a sense, I am Jacob Horner. —John Barth, The End of the Road (1958) 35. It was like so, but wasn't. —Richard Powers, Galatea 2.2 (1995) 36. —Money . . . in a voice that rustled. —William Gaddis, J R (1975) 37. Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. —Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (1925) 38. All this happened, more or less. —Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) 39. They shoot the white girl first. —Toni Morrison, Paradise (1998) 40. For a long time, I went to bed early. —Marcel Proust, Swann's Way (1913; trans. Lydia Davis) 41. The moment one learns English, complications set in. —Felipe Alfau, Chromos (1990) 42. Dr. Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature. —Anita Brookner, The Debut (1981) 43. I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By the false azure in the windowpane; —Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire (1962) 44. Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. —Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) 45. I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story. —Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome (1911) 46. Ages ago, Alex, Allen and Alva arrived at Antibes, and Alva allowing all, allowing anyone, against Alex's admonition, against Allen's angry assertion: another African amusement . . . anyhow, as all argued, an awesome African army assembled and arduously advanced against an African anthill, assiduously annihilating ant after ant, and afterward, Alex astonishingly accuses Albert as also accepting Africa's antipodal ant annexation.  —Walter Abish, Alphabetical Africa (1974) 47. There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. —C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952) 48. He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. —Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea (1952) 49. It was the day my grandmother exploded. —Iain M. Banks, The Crow Road (1992) 50. I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974. —Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex (2002) 51. Elmer Gantry was drunk. —Sinclair Lewis, Elmer Gantry (1927) 52. We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall. —Louise Erdrich, Tracks (1988) 53. It was a pleasure to burn. —Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953) 54. A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead. —Graham Greene, The End of the Affair (1951) 55. Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression. —Flann O'Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds (1939) 56. I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family, tho' not of that Country, my Father being a Foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull; He got a good Estate by Merchandise, and leaving off his Trade, lived afterward at York, from whence he had married my Mother, whose Relations were named Robinson, a very good Family in that Country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but by the usual Corruption of Words in England, we are now called, nay we call our selves, and write our Name Crusoe, and so my Companions always call'd me. —Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719) 57. In the beginning, sometimes I left messages in the street. —David Markson, Wittgenstein's Mistress (1988) 58. Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress. —George Eliot, Middlemarch (1872) 59. It was love at first sight. —Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (1961) 60. What if this young woman, who writes such bad poems, in competition with her husband, whose poems are equally bad, should stretch her remarkably long and well-made legs out before you, so that her skirt slips up to the tops of her stockings? —Gilbert Sorrentino, Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things (1971) 61. I have never begun a novel with more misgiving. —W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge (1944) 62. Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person. —Anne Tyler, Back When We Were Grownups (2001) 63. The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. —G. K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904) 64. In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. —F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925) 65. You better not never tell nobody but God. —Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1982) 66. "To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die." —Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (1988) 67. It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York. —Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (1963) 68. Most really pretty girls have pretty ugly feet, and so does Mindy Metalman, Lenore notices, all of a sudden. —David Foster Wallace, The Broom of the System (1987) 69. If I am out of my mind, it's all right with me, thought Moses Herzog. —Saul Bellow, Herzog (1964) 70. Francis Marion Tarwater's uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave and a Negro named Buford Munson, who had come to get a jug filled, had to finish it and drag the body from the breakfast table where it was still sitting and bury it in a decent and Christian way, with the sign of its Saviour at the head of the grave and enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up. —Flannery O'Connor, The Violent Bear it Away (1960) 71. Granted: I am an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there's a peephole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me. —GŸnter Grass, The Tin Drum (1959; trans. Ralph Manheim) 72. When Dick Gibson was a little boy he was not Dick Gibson. —Stanley Elkin, The Dick Gibson Show (1971) 73. Hiram Clegg, together with his wife Emma and four friends of the faith from Randolph Junction, were summoned by the Spirit and Mrs. Clara Collins, widow of the beloved Nazarene preacher Ely Collins, to West Condon on the weekend of the eighteenth and nineteenth of April, there to await the End of the World. —Robert Coover, The Origin of the Brunists (1966) 74. She waited, Kate Croy, for her father to come in, but he kept her unconscionably, and there were moments at which she showed herself, in the glass over the mantel, a face positively pale with the irritation that had brought her to the point of going away without sight of him. —Henry James, The Wings of the Dove (1902) 75. In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. —Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929) 76. "Take my camel, dear," said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass. —Rose Macaulay, The Towers of Trebizond (1956) 77. He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull.  —Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim (1900) 78. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.  —L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between (1953) 79. On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen. —Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker (1980) 80. Justice?—You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law. —William Gaddis, A Frolic of His Own (1994) 81. Vaughan died yesterday in his last car-crash. —J. G. Ballard, Crash (1973) 82. I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. —Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle (1948) 83. "When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets," Papa would say, "she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing." —Katherine Dunn, Geek Love (1983) 84. In the last years of the Seventeenth Century there was to be found among the fops and fools of the London coffee-houses one rangy, gangling flitch called Ebenezer Cooke, more ambitious than talented, and yet more talented than prudent, who, like his friends-in-folly, all of whom were supposed to be educating at Oxford or Cambridge, had found the sound of Mother English more fun to game with than her sense to labor over, and so rather than applying himself to the pains of scholarship, had learned the knack of versifying, and ground out quires of couplets after the fashion of the day, afroth with Joves and Jupiters, aclang with jarring rhymes, and string-taut with similes stretched to the snapping-point. —John Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor (1960) 85. When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.  —James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss (1978) 86. It was just noon that Sunday morning when the sheriff reached the jail with Lucas Beauchamp though the whole town (the whole county too for that matter) had known since the night before that Lucas had killed a white man. —William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust (1948) 87. I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as "Claudius the Idiot," or "That Claudius," or "Claudius the Stammerer," or "Clau-Clau-Claudius" or at best as "Poor Uncle Claudius," am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the "golden predicament" from which I have never since become disentangled. —Robert Graves, I, Claudius (1934) 88. Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I've come to learn, is women. —Charles Johnson, Middle Passage (1990) 89. I am an American, Chicago born—Chicago, that somber city—and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. —Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March (1953) 90. The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods. —Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt (1922) 91. I will tell you in a few words who I am: lover of the hummingbird that darts to the flower beyond the rotted sill where my feet are propped; lover of bright needlepoint and the bright stitching fingers of humorless old ladies bent to their sweet and infamous designs; lover of parasols made from the same puffy stuff as a young girl's underdrawers; still lover of that small naval boat which somehow survived the distressing years of my life between her decks or in her pilothouse; and also lover of poor dear black Sonny, my mess boy, fellow victim and confidant, and of my wife and child. But most of all, lover of my harmless and sanguine self. —John Hawkes, Second Skin (1964) 92. He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. —Raphael Sabatini, Scaramouche (1921) 93. Psychics can see the color of time it's blue. —Ronald Sukenick, Blown Away (1986) 94. In the town, there were two mutes and they were always together. —Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940) 95. Once upon a time two or three weeks ago, a rather stubborn and determined middle-aged man decided to record for posterity, exactly as it happened, word by word and step by step, the story of another man for indeed what is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal, a somewhat paranoiac fellow unmarried, unattached, and quite irresponsible, who had decided to lock himself in a room a furnished room with a private bath, cooking facilities, a bed, a table, and at least one chair, in New York City, for a year 365 days to be precise, to write the story of another person—a shy young man about of 19 years old—who, after the war the Second World War, had come to America the land of opportunities from France under the sponsorship of his uncle—a journalist, fluent in five languages—who himself had come to America from Europe Poland it seems, though this was not clearly established sometime during the war after a series of rather gruesome adventures, and who, at the end of the war, wrote to the father his cousin by marriage of the young man whom he considered as a nephew, curious to know if he the father and his family had survived the German occupation, and indeed was deeply saddened to learn, in a letter from the young man—a long and touching letter written in English, not by the young man, however, who did not know a damn word of English, but by a good friend of his who had studied English in school—that his parents both his father and mother and his two sisters one older and the other younger than he had been deported they were Jewish to a German concentration camp Auschwitz probably and never returned, no doubt having been exterminated deliberately X * X * X * X, and that, therefore, the young man who was now an orphan, a displaced person, who, during the war, had managed to escape deportation by working very hard on a farm in Southern France, would be happy and grateful to be given the opportunity to come to America that great country he had heard so much about and yet knew so little about to start a new life, possibly go to school, learn a trade, and become a good, loyal citizen. —Raymond Federman, Double or Nothing (1971) 96. Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. —Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye (1988) 97. He—for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it—was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters. —Virginia Woolf, Orlando (1928) 98. High, high above the North Pole, on the first day of 1969, two professors of English Literature approached each other at a combined velocity of 1200 miles per hour. —David Lodge, Changing Places (1975) 99. They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did. —Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) 100. The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. —Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage (1895) Menguak Sisi Gelap Tuan Penguasa  Diresensi Linda Nurhayati, Sarjana Sastra Unpad Judul     : Burung Terbangdi Kelam Malam Penulis   : Arafat Nur Penerbit : PT Bentang Pustaka Tebal     : xiv+376 halaman Cetakan : Pertama, 2014 ISBN     : 978-602-7888-93-7 Terjadinya intrik politik dalam proses penentuan seorang kepala daerah sudah lazim. Ambisi seseorang untuk menjadi penguasa mendorongnya menempuh segala cara demi image. Sosok yang digadang-gadang menang tidak jarang pribadi yang baik di masyarakat, tapi penuh borok di belakang. Begitulah sebagian isi dari novel Burung Terbang di Kelam Malam. Cerita berpokok pada sosok Tuan Beransyah yang mengajukan diri menjadi kandidat Wali Kota Lamlhok, sebuah kota di Aceh. Dia dikenal alim dan dermawan, beristri satu. Padahal, sesungguhnya istri mudanya tersebar di beberapa daerah. Dia juga licik dengan memanfaatkan para wartawan demi mendongkrak citra. Tuan Beransyah adalah seorang pengusaha sukses yang awalnya berjualan melinjo. Bisnisnya kemudian bercabang-cabang dan diduga salah satunya ganja. Namun, tentu saja, hal tersebut berhasil ditutup rapat-rapat. Seorang wartawan muda bernama Fais bertekad menguak kebusukan Tuan Beransyah. Dia tidak rela kotanya dipimpin seorang munafik. Dia berencana membuat novel berdasarkan kisah nyata Tuan Beransyah. Dengan demikian, orang-orang bisa mengetahui tokoh itu yang sebenarnya. Fais lalu berkelana menyusuri daerah-daerah tempat tinggal para gundik Tuan Beransyah. Dia mengumpulkan data dijadikan bahan novel yang nantinya akan mengungkap perangai asli Tuan Beransyah. Dari perjalanannya, selain memperoleh data, Fais pun mendapati fakta yang menyedihkan tentang kondisi Aceh pasca perang dan tsunami. "Di luar sana masih tampak jelas gambaran suram masa lalu membayangi sampai sekarang. Terlihat puing-puing bangunan bekas dibakar semasa perang dulu. Kendaraan-kendaraan rusak parah akibat kena hantam pelontar roket pemberontak yang dulu kerap mengadang pasukanpasukan kecil pemerintah di jalanjalan sepi pada masa perang.”(hal 46). Interaksi Fais dengan istri-istri simpanan Tuan Beransyah membuatnya gamang. Sesungguhnya dia sudah punya teman dekat bernama Safira. Tapi, dia bingung dengan kondisi dirinya yang masih merasa belum bisa terikat dalam satu hubungan. Fais yang tampan sering kali membuat perempuan di sekitarnya terpesona. Ada beberapa dari istri simpanan Tuan Beransyah yang masih muda dan cantik, juga tetangganya yang masih remaja, serta rekan kerjanya, jatuh cinta kepadanya. Namun, Fais tidak bisa mengambil keputusan. Setelah Tuan Beransyah benar-benar terpilih menjadi wali kota, Fais geram. Sebelumnya, dia tidak berdaya menolak permintaan Beransyah dan istrinya untuk menulis yang baik-baik tentang dirinya dan kegiatannya yang seolah memihak rakyat. Kini dia ingin menuliskan kenyataan buruk Tuan Beransyah. Tulisannya kemudian muncul di koran dan membuat gempar kota. Fais lalu diburu orang-orang dekat Tuan Beransyah, rumahnya diobrakabrik. Tapi, Fais mencoba bersikap tenang. "Sekalipun mulai gemetaran, aku masih bersikap biasa saja dan sempat berlagak di depannya. Biasa, perkara yang lazim menimpa wartawan bandel" (hal 330). Kemudian Fais bersembunyi demi menyelamatkan diri. Dia dikeluarkan dari perusahaan surat kabar tempatnya bekerja agar korannya tak dibreidel. Burung Terbang di Kelam Malam merupakan novel dengan kritik sosial yang kental. Pemerintahan korup, politik kotor, penyedotan sumber kekayaan daerah, dan kondisi sosial masyarakat karut-marut mendapat sorotan tajam. Sosok Tuan Beransyah memperlihatkan bahwa pemimpin yang tampak baik, biasanya menyimpan kebusukan. Namun, pada suatu hari, kebusukan itu terungkap juga.[Koran Jakarta]

Menguak Sisi Gelap Seorang Penguasa

Diresensi Linda Nurhayati,

Sarjana Sastra Unpad

Judul     : Burung Terbangdi Kelam Malam

Penulis   : Arafat Nur

Penerbit : PT Bentang Pustaka

Tebal     : xiv+376 halaman

Cetakan : Pertama, 2014

ISBN     : 978-602-7888-93-7

Terjadinya intrik politik dalam proses penentuan seorang kepala daerah sudah lazim. Ambisi seseorang untuk menjadi penguasa mendorongnya menempuh segala cara demi image.

Sosok yang digadang-gadang menang tidak jarang pribadi yang baik di masyarakat, tapi penuh borok di belakang. Begitulah sebagian isi dari novel Burung Terbang di Kelam Malam.

Cerita berpokok pada sosok Tuan Beransyah yang mengajukan diri menjadi kandidat Wali Kota Lamlhok, sebuah kota di Aceh. Dia dikenal alim dan dermawan, beristri satu. Padahal, sesungguhnya istri mudanya tersebar di beberapa daerah.

Dia juga licik dengan memanfaatkan para wartawan demi mendongkrak citra. Tuan Beransyah adalah seorang pengusaha sukses yang awalnya berjualan melinjo.

Bisnisnya kemudian bercabang-cabang dan diduga salah satunya ganja. Namun, tentu saja, hal tersebut berhasil ditutup rapat-rapat. Seorang wartawan muda bernama Fais bertekad menguak kebusukan Tuan Beransyah.

Dia tidak rela kotanya dipimpin seorang munafik. Dia berencana membuat novel berdasarkan kisah nyata Tuan Beransyah. Dengan demikian, orang-orang bisa mengetahui tokoh itu yang sebenarnya. Fais lalu berkelana menyusuri daerah-daerah tempat tinggal para gundik Tuan Beransyah.

Dia mengumpulkan data dijadikan bahan novel yang nantinya akan mengungkap perangai asli Tuan Beransyah. Dari perjalanannya, selain memperoleh data, Fais pun mendapati fakta yang menyedihkan tentang kondisi Aceh pasca perang dan tsunami.

"Di luar sana masih tampak jelas gambaran suram masa lalu membayangi sampai sekarang. Terlihat puing-puing bangunan bekas dibakar semasa perang dulu. Kendaraan-kendaraan rusak parah akibat kena hantam pelontar roket pemberontak yang dulu kerap mengadang pasukanpasukan kecil pemerintah di jalanjalan sepi pada masa perang.”(hal 46).

Interaksi Fais dengan istri-istri simpanan Tuan Beransyah membuatnya gamang. Sesungguhnya dia sudah punya teman dekat bernama Safira. Tapi, dia bingung dengan kondisi dirinya yang masih merasa belum bisa terikat dalam satu hubungan.

Fais yang tampan sering kali membuat perempuan di sekitarnya terpesona. Ada beberapa dari istri simpanan Tuan Beransyah yang masih muda dan cantik, juga tetangganya yang masih remaja, serta rekan kerjanya, jatuh cinta kepadanya. Namun, Fais tidak bisa mengambil keputusan.

Setelah Tuan Beransyah benar-benar terpilih menjadi wali kota, Fais geram. Sebelumnya, dia tidak berdaya menolak permintaan Beransyah dan istrinya untuk menulis yang baik-baik tentang dirinya dan kegiatannya yang seolah memihak rakyat. Kini dia ingin menuliskan kenyataan buruk Tuan Beransyah.

Tulisannya kemudian muncul di koran dan membuat gempar kota. Fais lalu diburu orang-orang dekat Tuan Beransyah, rumahnya diobrakabrik. Tapi, Fais mencoba bersikap tenang.

"Sekalipun mulai gemetaran, aku masih bersikap biasa saja dan sempat berlagak di depannya. Biasa, perkara yang lazim menimpa wartawan bandel" (hal 330). Kemudian Fais bersembunyi demi menyelamatkan diri. Dia dikeluarkan dari perusahaan surat kabar tempatnya bekerja agar korannya tak dibreidel.

Burung Terbang di Kelam Malam merupakan novel dengan kritik sosial yang kental. Pemerintahan korup, politik kotor, penyedotan sumber kekayaan daerah, dan kondisi sosial masyarakat karut-marut mendapat sorotan tajam.

Sosok Tuan Beransyah memperlihatkan bahwa pemimpin yang tampak baik, biasanya menyimpan kebusukan. Namun, pada suatu hari, kebusukan itu terungkap juga.[Koran Jakarta]

Duka Dunia untuk Gabriel Garcia Marquez

 Kematian Gabriel Garcia Marquez pada Kamis (17/4/2014) ditangisi di seluruh dunia. Bagi orang-orang yang mengenal dia atau karyanya, Marquez dipuji sebagai raksasa sastra modern. Sepanjang hayatnya, Marquez menegaskan bahwa dia selalu adalah seorang wartawan.

Marquez adalah penulis dari novel dan cerpen yang memabukkan, penuh dengan nuansa khas Amerika Latin, seperti takhayul, kekerasan, dan kesenjangan sosial. Dia secara luas dianggap sebagai penulis berbahasa Spanyol paling populer setelah Miguel de Cervantes yang hidup pada abad ke-17.

Lahir di Kolombia 87 tahun lalu, pemenang Nobel Sastra pada 1982 ini disandingkan kebesarannya dengan Mark Twain dan Charles Dickens. 

Karya-karyanya, antara lain Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Love in the Time of Cholera, dan Autumn of the Patriarch, laris manis melebihi karya cetak apa pun dalam bahasa Spanyol, selain Injil. Novel epik yang dia tulis pada 1967, One Hundred Years of Solitude, terjual lebih dari 50 juta kopi dan diterjemahkan ke lebih dari 25 bahasa.

Cara Marquez bertutur tentang kehidupan sehari-hari membuat dia terkenal sebagai praktisi sastra realisme magis. Dia bisa menulis sebuah cerita fiksi dengan unsur fantastis, seperti ketika bertutur tentang anak laki-laki yang lahir dengan ekor babi atau seorang pria yang terseret awan kupu-kupu kuning.

Lewat akun Twitter, Presiden Kolombia menuliskan ungkapan dukacitanya untuk Marquez, dengan menyisipkan salah satu judul novel Marquez di dalamnya. "A thousand years of solitude and sadness at the death of the greatest Colombian of all time," tulis dia. Seribu tahun kesendirian dan kesedihan karena kematian dari orang Kolombia terbesar sepanjang masa.

Juga lewat Twitter, Perdana Menteri Spanyol Mariano Rajoy mengungkapkan, "Rasa sayang dan kekaguman terhadap seorang penulis penting, sastra Spanyol maupun universal, di paruh kedua abad ke-20."

Kalimat pertama pada novel One Hundred Years of Solitude telah menjadi salah dari sekian kalimat pembuka yang sangat terkenal. "Bertahun-tahun kemudian, saat ia menghadapi regu tembak, Kolonel Aureliano Buendia ingat tentang satu sore saat ayahnya membawa dia menemukan es."

Gerald Martin, penulis biografi setengah resmi tentang Garcia Marquez, mengatakan kepada Associated Press bahwa One Hundred Years of Solitude adalah novel pertama yang menggambarkan pengakuan Amerika Latin tentang diri mereka sendiri, mendefinisikan keberadaan mereka, merayakan semangat mereka, intensitas mereka, spiritual sekaligus takhayul, serta kecenderungan mereka untuk gagal.

Penghormatan terakhir

Keluarga Marquez merencanakan upacara pribadi untuk memberikan penghormatan terakhir bagi penulis ini. Rencananya, jasad Marquez akan dikremasi. Sementara itu, Pemerintah Meksiko menjadwalkan upacara penghormatan publik pada Senin (21/4/2014), bertempat di Palace of Fine Arts, pusat art decoyang bersejarah di Mexico City, Palace of Fine Arts.

Duta Besar Kolombia untuk Meksiko, Julio Gabriel Ortiz, lewat wartawan mengusulkan agar abu Marquez ditebar di antara Meksiko dan Kolombia. Belum ada konfirmasi dari keluarga soal disetujui atau tidaknya usul tersebut.

"Akan ada sebagian (abu) di Meksiko, tentu saja. Saya bepikir bahwa ada bagian lain yang juga bisa berada di Kolombia," ujar Ortiz. "Kami ingin mendapatkan kehormatan itu, memiliki bagian abunya yang beristirahat dengan tenang di sana."

Ketika menerima Nobel pada 1982, Marquez dalam pidatonya menggambarkan Amerika Latin sebagai sumber kreativitas yang tak pernah terpuaskan, penuh kesedihan sekaligus keindahan, bergantian dengan keberuntungan. Puisi dan pengemis, musisi dan para nabi, prajurit dan bajingan, sebut dia, menjadi realitas tak terkendali.

"Kami harus bertanya dengan sedikit imajinasi saja, mengenai masalah penting kami, tentang kurangnya cara konvensional yang bisa membuat hidup kami dapat lebih diyakini," kata Garcia Marquez. Seperti kebanyakan penulis Amerika Latin, Garcia Marquez melampaui dunia huruf. Dia menjadi pahlawan bagi kaum kiri Amerika Latin, menjadi sekutu awal pemimpin revolusi Kuba Fidel Castro, sekaligus pengkritik intervensi Washington ke Vietnam hingga Cile.

Selama bertahun-tahun, Garcia Marquez tak bisa mendapatkan visa kunjungan ke Amerika Serikat, tetapi para pemimpin negara, termasuk Amerika, terus mendekatinya. Bill Clinton dan Francois Mitterand adalah dua di antara presiden yang menjadi temannya.

Tak hanya fiksi

Bersama Norman Mailer dan Tom Wolfe, Garcia Marquez adalah pelaku awal penulisan nonfiksi sastra yang kemudian dikenal sebagai "new journalism". Jejak jurnalisme sastrawinya berupa karya-karya seperti Story of A Shipwrecked Sailor, yang bertutur tentang kehidupan pelaut yang bertahan hidup selama 10 hari terombang-ambing di lautan.

Tulisan lain non-fiksi Marquez adalah profil pemimpin Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. Dia menggambarkan dengan sangat jelas tentang Pablo Escobar yang menyobek tatanan sosial dan moral di tanah kelahirannya, Kolombia. 

Pada 1994, Garcia Marquez mendirikan Iberoamerican Foundation for New Journalism, yang membuat pelatihan dan kompetisi untuk meningkatkan standar jurnalistik naratif dan investigatif bagi para wartawan di seantero Amerika Latin. "Dunia telah kehilangan salah satu penulis terbesar yang visioner dan salah satu favorit saya saat saya muda," kata Presiden Amerika Serikat Barack Obama. 

Garcia Marquez lahir di Aracataca, sebuah kota kecil dekat pantai Karibia, Kolombia, pada 6 Maret 1927. Ia adalah anak tertua dari 11 anak-anak Luisa Santiaga Marquez dan Gabriel Garcia Elijio, pengirim kawat dan apoteker homeopati yang suka mengembara, yang juga adalah ayah dari setidaknya empat anak-anak di luar pernikahannya.

Saya adalah wartawan

Sesaat setelah lahir, Marquez dititipkan kepada kakek dari pihak ibu yang kemudian pindah ke Barranquilla untuk membuka apotek. Cerita tentang kakek-neneknya merupakan inspirasi dari cerita fiksi "Macondo", dan Arataca menjadi rujukan lokasi novel yang sama. Sebuah desa dikelilingi perkebunan pisang, yang kemudian juga menjadi latar novel One Hundred Years of Solitude.

"Saya sering diberi tahu oleh keluarga bahwa saya mulai menceritakan banyak hal, cerita dan sebagainya, sejak mulai bisa bicara," kata Garcia pada suatu ketika dalam sebuah wawancara. Menjalani pendidikan di sekolah berasrama, dia menjadi bintang kelas dan sekaligus pembaca yang rakus, dan menggemari karya-karya Hemingway, Faulkner, Dostoevsky, dan Kafka.

Karya pertama Marquez adalah cerita fiksi pendek untuk koran El Espectator, pada 1947. Meski dipaksa ayahnya belajar ilmu hukum, kebosanan mengantarkan Marquez mendedikasikan diri untuk jurnalisme. 

Namun, haluan tulisannya adalah pandangan politik kiri. Pembantaian di dekat Aracataca pada 1928 dan pembunuhan kandidat presiden dari sayap kiri, Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, pada 1948, sangat memengaruhi gaya tulisan Marquez sesudahnya. 

Sempat tinggal beberapa tahun di Eropa, Marquez kembali ke Kolombia pada 1958, menikahi Mercedes Barcha yang adalah anak tetangganya sejak kecil. Pasangan ini memiliki dua anak. Pada 1981, dia meninggalkan Kolombia setelah dituduh bersimpati kepada pemberontak M-19 dan mengirimkan sejumlah uang untuk gerilyawan Venezuela. Mexico City menjadi tempat tinggal dia berikutnya sampai meninggal.

Pada 1976, Marquez pernah terlibat perseteruan terkenal dengan penulis Peru, Mario Vargas Llosa. Mereka adu tinju di luar bioskop di Mexico City, dan pada sebuah kesempatan, alasan perkelahian itu pernah dibahas secara terbuka. "Seorang pria hebat telah meninggal. Karya-karyanya telah membuat sastra kita menjadi besar dan bergengsi," ujar Vargas Llosa, Kamis, dalam wawancara televisi.

Melewati kemiskinan hingga sebagian besar masa dewasanya, Marquez sedikit berubah oleh ketenaran dan kekayaan pada kemudian hari. Namun, dia adalah tuan rumah yang ramah bagi tamu-tamunya, yang dengan penuh semangat menceritakan kisah-kisah panjang untuk para tamu.

Garcia Marquez menolak tawaran menjadi duta besar, juga menolak untuk dicalonkan sebagai presiden Kolombia. Namun, dia terlibat dalam upaya mediasi Pemerintah Kolombia dan pemberontak sayap kiri. 

Pada 1998, dalam usia 70-an tahun, dia mewujudkan impian seumur hidup dengan membeli saham mayoritas sebuah majalah berita Cambo di Kolombia, memakai uang dari hadiah Nobel-nya. Pada tahun berikutnya, dia terserang kanker getah bening. Hingga jatuh sakit, dia masih berkontribusi besar bagi majalah itu. 

"Saya adalah jurnalis. Saya selalu adalah seorang wartawan," kata Marquez pada suatu ketika kepada Associated Press. "Semua buku saya tak mungkin saya tulis jika saya bukan wartawan karena semua bahan (buku itu) berasal dari kejadian nyata."(Kompas)

Burung Terbang di Kelam Malam   

Burung Terbang di Kelam Malam

JIKA kehidupan adalah sebuah perjalanan, Fais adalah seorang petualang yang berjalan sendirian di antara riuhnya dunia. Di tengah masyarakat yang mengelu-elukan sosok Tuan Beransyah, Fais memilih jalannya sendiri. Ia ingin membuktikan bahwa kandidat wali kota yang dikenal alim, dermawan, dan pandai agama itu tidak lain adalah sosok yang amat munafik.

Maka, dimulailah sebuah perjalanan dengan kejutan di setiap tikungannya. Perjalanan itu tidak saja membuat Fais menemukan kebenaran di balik politik pencitraan yang memuakkan, tetapi juga kebenaran perasaannya. Fais akhirnya sadar, pertemuan dengan perempuan-perempuan yang sempat menggetarkan hatinya justru adalah jalan yang membawanya pulang pada cinta sejatinya.

Burung Terbang di Kelam Malam adalah novel terbaru Arafat Nur yang mengungkap kehidupan sosial yang begitu dekat; tentang sisi gelap politik dan cinta. Hubungan cinta terlarang, perasaan tidak berdaya, takut kehilangan, dan kesedihan  yang begitu kental, tanpa kehilangan rasa humor. Sebuah kisah yang berliku, tetapi diceritakan dengan sangat lugas dan mengalir.