Ben Bland‘s new biography of Indonesian president Joko Widodo has attracted a wide range of interest from scholars of Indonesian politics and society. Titled Man of Contradictions, the book is the first English-language biography of Indonesia’s seventh president.

A number of reviews have recently been published by Indonesians and Indonesianists, including one by me. Here are some of the most notable ones:

• By Nava Nuraniyah, in the Lowy Interpreter.
• By Ed Aspinall, at Inside Story
• By Marcus Mietzner, at Inside Indonesia
• And finally, mine over at the Council of Foreign Relations’ Asia Unbound blog.

These are all worth a read, as they are interesting to compare. So, too, is the book itself.