It is Utami's first novel, and depicts the lives of four sexually-liberated female friends, and a former Catholic priest, Saman, for whom the book is named.

Saman follows four sexually liberated female friends: Yasmin, a married Catholic lawyer from Manado; Cok, a Balinese businesswoman with a high libido; Shakuntala, a bisexual Javanese dancer; and Laila, a Muslim Minangkabau-Sundanese journalist.

The other protagonist is the titular Saman, a former Catholic priest turned human rights activist who becomes the target of sexual advances by Yasmin and Cok.

The first chapter, beginning in Central Park, New York, describes Laila waiting for the married Sihar and planning to lose her virginity to him.

After the attempt fails and the plantation's hired thugs raze the community to the ground and kills those who resist, Saman is captured and tortured.

Shakuntala recounts a fantasy she had as a teenager about meeting a "foreign demon", embracing him and then having a debate on the different cultural aspects of sexuality.

[2] Junaidi notes that although Saman is about a female's perspective of sexuality, it also deals with the authoritarianism of Suharto's regime of the New Order, including the repression of human rights activists.

She cites the scene where Shakuntala fantasizes encountering a "foreign demon" (European explorer) while bathing, later "embracing" him and discussing the "bizarre" requirement that Asian men are required to wear penis decorations and the "crassness" of Europeans who do not care about virginity, wear bikinis in public, and show sex on television.

[2] In her master's thesis, Micaela Campbell writes that Saman's mother, known only as "Ibu" (Indonesian for 'Mother'), was "highly susceptible to supernatural forces that seem to govern over her".

[2] However, others disapproved of the open sexuality of the novel, and its explicit use of the words "penis", "vagina", "orgasm" and "condoms" was considered "too much";[2] other controversial terms include "rape me", "I am still a virgin", and "masturbation".

[9] Campbell notes that the use of language in Saman reflects the positioning of the female characters as self-empowered and independent, capable of making their own decisions.

[13] In Saman Utami became one of the first female Indonesian authors to explicitly discuss sexuality, generally a taboo subject for women, in her work.

[9] Utami suggests that the rumours were based on a belief that only men could write good novels; the literature scene before Saman had indeed been dominated by male writers.