Rumah Hujan

The novel Rumah Hujan is an expanded adaptation of Dewi Ria Utari’s short story of the same title. This novel unfolds the story of an antique Javanese house purchased by a female painter named Dayu, who installs it behind her home to serve as her studio. Yet the house carries within its walls a dark and sorrow-laden past: the life of its former owner, a female healer named Narpati—driven to the margins by a village community that depended on her skills even as they condemned her socially. The injustices she endured seeped into the house, taking root, waiting through the years for the right soul to arrive.

Dayu is raised in a situation that echoes Narpati’s. Since childhood, she has felt that her mother never accepted her. She grows up shadowed by the unanswered question of why her own mother harbors such deep resentment toward her.

Narpati and Dayu—two women separated by time—are bound together by a house that becomes the vessel through which they share their pain, their wounds, their vengeance, and their love.