Ajo Kawir is one of the toughest fighters in the Javanese underworld, his fearlessness matched only by his unquenchable thirst for brawling. But the young thug is driven by a painful secret - he is impotent. When he finally meets his match in the shape of the fearsomely beautiful bodyguard Iteung, Ajo is left bruised, battered and overjoyed - he has fallen in love. But will he ever be able to make Iteung happy? Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash is a gloriously pulpy tale of bloody fists, broken hearts and dueling Jakarta truckers, from the Man Booker International-longlisted author of Beauty is a Wound.

"A tragicomedy Indonesian thriller... By turns a soft porn flick, a manic road thriller and a martial arts movie... A blast of a book" - Financial Times

"Hard-boiled pulp fiction... written with literary flair, commenting on Indonesia's history and sense of nationhood while delivering gangster thrills" - Herald

"A potent blend of grounded realism and flighty fantasy... a pulpy, visceral tale of sex, violence and comeuppance" - Economist

"Thrilling... engrossing, emotionally rankling speed-read... original and sure-footed" - Big Issue

"An almost unbelievably fun and weird novel" - Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Like a Tarantino movie: as a sort of bravura, X-rated pantomime, delivered with style and panache... superb" - Asian Review of Books

"Keeps the tension going until the very end, urging the reader on... An excellent read, both entertaining and intriguing" - Tony's Reading List (blog)

"Praise for Beauty is a Wound" - _

"A literary child of Günter Grass, Gabriel García Márquez, and Salman Rushdie" - New York Review of Books

"Exuberant, funny, crackling with energy and invention" - Times

"An old-school gothic folk tale, full of dark magic, hyperbole and gratuitous violence" - Guardian, Books of the Year

"A howling masterpiece" - Chigozie Obioma, author of The Fishermen

"An unforgettable, all-encompassing epic... This is an astounding, momentous book" - Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A Southeast Asian storyteller with a magnificent and effortless grasp of his material" - South China Morning Post

"Original and powerful... Maybe, who knows, the judges of the Nobel Prize could, in a few years, consider giving [Eka] the prize that Indonesia has never received" - Le Monde

"Kurniawan's story of an undead woman had morphed into the story of modern Indonesia, an epic novel critics are more wont to compare to One Hundred Years of Solitude and The Canterbury Tales" - Sydney Morning Herald

"Praise for Eka Kurniawan" - ..

"What good fortune that English-speaking readers may now find ourselves enchanted, confronted, and perhaps transformed by Kurniawan's work" - Bookforum

"In terms of the literary novel, the year's most stirring revelation is Eka Kurniawan" - Flavorwire

"Seems destined to join the ranks of our great storytellers like Salman Rushdie and Gabriel Garcia Marquez" - Literary Hub

"The rising star of Indonesian fiction... Kurniawan's writing demonstrates an affinity with literary heavyweights such as, yes, García Márquez and Dostoevsky" - Guardian