The
story behind the writing of THE BURU QUARTET by Pramoedya Ananta Toer (Which is comprised
of four books THIS EARTH OF MANKIND, CHILD OF ALL NATIONS, FOOTSTEPS, and HOUSE
OF GLASS) is worthy of a couple of novels itself. It’s a story of tremendous perseverance over
violence and torture.
Toer,
Indonesia’s greatest writer, was detained in the infamous Buru Island prison as
a political prisoner for ten years by the US backed dictatorship of Suharto. He was denied paper and pencil and so told
this story orally to other prisoners who helped him remember the details so he
could write it down later when he was finally released.
It
was a travesty that Toer never won the Nobel Prize for literature but the US
working with Indonesia may have had something to do with that. More on Toer’s life and times here http://www.counterpunch.org/2006/05/02/on-the-death-of-pramoedya-ananta-toer/
THE
BURU QUARTER, I’ve read is perhaps semi-autobiographical, with Minke, the main
character, as a stand-in for Toer himself or other Indonesian anti-colonialist
nationalist leaders. The forward to the
first book describes this type of writing as creating “a new historical
personality in the process of being forged by history itself”
I’m
really excited to start these books.
I’ve read THE GIRL FROM THE COAST by Toer which I reviewed here http://rgdinmalaysia.blogspot.com/2011/02/girl-from-coast-by-pramoeda-ananta-toer.html
as well as a number of his short stories but this is regarded by pretty much
everyone as his masterwork.
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