India, April 4 -- Growing up in a small Indonesian town, Sato Reang has a happy childhood playing soccer and watching crickets fight. Until the day he is circumcised and his father declares that he is now "a pious boy". Sato soon learns that a life of piety means a loss of all the everyday pleasures he once enjoyed, as he wakes at dawn for the first call to prayer, and spends the evening in Quranic recitation. Sato obeys his father's strictures, until his father dies. Then he embarks on a life of mischief. He no longer goes to the mosque, or prays five times a day. And he does not rest until he makes Jamal, the most pious boy in school, commit a sin. What starts as mischief ends in tragedy, exploring questions about teenage rebellion, flawed parenting, force and freedom. The Dog Meows, the Cat Barks is Eka Kurniawan's most contemporarily relevant book. Relentlessly funny and frank, this new novel by one of Indonesia's best-known writers makes for compulsive reading....