Buried Histories

John Roosa is an associate professor at the University of British Columbia and the author of Pretext for Mass Murder: The September 30th Movement and Suharto's Coup d'État in Indonesia.

In compelling prose and with heartbreaking intimacy, Roosa offers the most important collection of case studies of the Indonesian massacres ever published. This is an essential, masterful, and devastating book for anyone who cares about the history and mechanics of human evil." - Joshua Oppenheimer, director of The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence"This is a rigorous study graced with absorbing and poignant stories. Roosa presents the subjectivity of the perpetrators, bystanders, resisters, and victims with a rare sense of subtlety. Attentive to the contingencies of history, he shows how nothing was inevitable in the tragic muteness of countless disappearances." - Karlina Supelli, Driyarkara School of Philosophy, Jakarta"Roosa portrays a tense political environment that gave no real hint of the killing that was to follow. This book represents a major breakthrough in presenting the killings in their immediate context and in the richness of its oral history data." - Robert Cribb, Australian National University