Supernova (2001) by Dewi Lestari came to my attention via an article I cannot find now that talked about the global diversity of contemporary science fiction–Lestari is Indonesian, and the book is firmly set there. The subtitle was added for later editions to differentiate it from other related novels and, somewhere along the line, the author began to be referred to as Dee, not Dewi.
There are several intertwined stories in the book, most notably the interplay of the characters of the main story and two fictional authors who are collaborating in writing that story. One of the authors (they are a male couple) is a psuedo-philosopher, and the book is clearly an attempt to play with loose concepts drawn from quantum physics and postmodern philosophy.
It’s a bit scattered, and unfortunately Lestari discards the character I was most invested in following about halfway through for others who are more clearly symbolic representations of ideals instead of flesh and blood creatures of fiction.
I may suffer from too much familiarity (many of these notions were relatively central to my thesis), and people new to notions of quantum entanglement) or post-Foucauldian analyses of the way relationships intertwine may find this a reasonable introduction to those concepts. Lestari has a nice touch with humor, and the lighter moments of the book are the most successful.
#WhatIWishICouldDo
I am pretty enamored, and quite familiar, with of a lot of the ideas that the fictional authors discuss in Supernova. It would be neat to weave those into my own writing, for sure.