Pramoedya Ananta Toer (1925-2006) was one of the greatest Indonesian prose writers of the 1900’s. He became one of the best-known Indonesian writers internationally, and his work has been translated into English, Dutch, German, Spanish, Russian, and Chinese.
Pramoedya was born on Feb. 6, 1925, in Blora, a small town in northern central Java, between Semarang and Surabaya. After the Japanese invasion in 1942, during World War II, his father went away. Pramoedya, the eldest child, had to provide for his 10 younger brothers and sisters by selling tobacco at a street stall. After his mother died, he went to Jakarta and worked for a Japanese press agency. He later joined the Indonesian army. In 1947, he went to work with the nationalists’ radio station. He was arrested by Dutch soldiers and held until the end of 1949, when the Dutch left Indonesia.
During Pramoedya’s time in prison, he wrote two of his most important works, the novels The Fugitive (1950) and Guerrilla Family (1950). In 1956, he went to China, which he found progressive. As a result, his ideas on politics became closer to those of the Indonesian Communist Party. In 1965, the Communists made an unsuccessful attempt to seize control of the government. Pramoedya was arrested by the Indonesian government and imprisoned on the island of Baru for 16 years. There he wrote four historical novels about Indonesian society under Dutch colonial rule during the early 1900’s. The novels are This Earth of Mankind (1980), Child of All Nations (1980), Footsteps (1985), and House of Glass (1988). The government eventually banned the novels, despite their popularity, and the last two works were published outside Indonesia. Pramoedya’s short stories were collected in Dawn (1950), Sparks of Revolution (1950), Tales of Blora (1952), and Tales of Jakarta (1957). He died on April 30, 2006.
