Siri’ is defined as sociocultural values used as a tool to maintain integrity and dignity as an individual as well as a member of the

Bugis community. It is also a state of humiliation or embarrassment within the Bugis and Makassar community.

Siri' starts from the sudden death of Bahjan Komarudin, a leading businessman and politician. His death reveals a love story as well as a complex polygamous life between Bahjan and Lie Mei Yuan, a girl of Chinese descent and Sulistiawati, a young girl who is trapped in tradition.

What started as a love story, then becomes the starting point of surprising encounters of people who are connected by their collective

memories. A Journalist and a stylist who were caught up in the conflict in Papua, an activists who disappeared, an artist who wandered to the end of Greece, the doctor who tried to commit suicide in Denmark, and everyone around them, completed each other like pieces of mosaic and formed a story in Siri'.

Mei Yuan - Bahjan - Sulis changed and grew older along with

a turbulent swift in Indonesian political landscape. In the midst of this change, the three generations in this novel struggled to deal with the new norms which challenged their identity. But the question remains: to what extent people want to cross the barrier of a long standing tradition to fulfil one's dream?