Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time
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Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

Our Little Rainbow Warriors

The Rainbow Troops by Andrea Hirata

October 4, 2025 by LittlePlat Leave a Comment

The Rainbow Troops (Laskar Pelangi) was first published about 20 years ago in Indonesia, where it soon became an absolute bestseller. The book, very loosely based on Andrea Hirata’s own childhood, is set on Belitong Island, where the people are poor, but the surrounds are rich in tin. Most children in the region struggle to obtain an education, but the young Malay boy Ikal and his friends do have one option open to them; a small Muhammadiya (Islamic) school run by an early teacher, Pak […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: Andrea Hirata, cbr17bingo, Education, Indonesia, school, semi-autobiography

LittlePlat's CBR17 Review No:27 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: Andrea Hirata, cbr17bingo, Education, Indonesia, school, semi-autobiography ·
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Indonesian best-seller about poverty, education and hope

July 29, 2017 by ElCicco Leave a Comment

The Rainbow Troops: A Novel is not so much a novel as a memoir or collection of vignettes from the author’s childhood in Indonesia. It is an eye-opener about life in the world’s fourth most populated country, the largest Muslim-majority country. Hirata is Indonesia’s best selling writer of all time (according to the book blurb) and The Rainbow Troops was a huge best-seller in Indonesia and abroad. Hirata provides a vivid depiction of the poverty that many Indonesians experience and of the hope that education […]

Filed Under: Biography/Memoir, Fiction Tagged With: #memoir, Andrea Hirata, cbr9, ElCicco, Fiction, Indonesia, The Rainbow Troops

ElCicco's CBR9 Review No:32 · Genres: Biography/Memoir, Fiction · Tags: #memoir, Andrea Hirata, cbr9, ElCicco, Fiction, Indonesia, The Rainbow Troops ·
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