| Subject: Pramoedya Ananta Toer dies at 81
Order Books by Pramoedya and Support ETAN
Agence France-Presse
Sunday April 30, 2006
Nobel Candidate Pramoedya Dies
Indonesia's best known writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer dies at 81
Indonesia's most celebrated novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer has died at
the age of 81, his family said.
Relatives said Pramoedya died at his East Jakarta home at 8.55 am.
A relative who identified himself as Gunawan said Pramoedya had been
hospitalized since Thursday for heart and other problems associated with
advanced age but on Saturday evening had insisted on returning home.
The exact cause of death was not clear, though one of his
grandchildren, Adit, said he believed Pramoedya died of a stroke.
 Pramoedya is best known for his "Buru Quartet" series written
during 14 years of political detention on Buru island in Maluku province
under then president Suharto.
Hailed by many international critics as Indonesia's leading modern
novelist, his work has been translated into 30 languages.
He was imprisoned by three successive regimes for writing seen as
politically uncompromising and consequently his books were largely banned
until Suharto's rule came to an end in 1998.
The novelist, essayist and short story writer was nominated several
times for the Nobel prize for literature, first in 1986, and last year was
the only Indonesian to appear on a list of 100 leading intellectuals named
by Britain's cultural Prospect magazine.
While Pramoedya never openly declared his political allegiances, he was
accused of being a communist by Suharto, who in 1965 banned the then
powerful Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) after a failed coup attempt and
launched a campaign against sympathisers that left at least 500,000 dead
and saw over one million arbitrarily arrested and jailed.
In the Buru series, set in the 1920s when the country was still a Dutch
colony, Pramoedya's portrayal of rising nationalism differed from the
official version.
His first jail term, under the Dutch colonial administration, was in
1947-1949 for agitating for independence.
The country's first president Sukarno imprisoned him once more between
1960 and 1961, while Suharto jailed him without trial from 1965 until
1979.
His mastery of colloquial language added realism to his novels, and the
alleged leftist tenor of his works angered Suharto's staunchly
anti-communist government.
After his release from prison, he remained under close government
surveillance until 1992, and was only able to leave the country after
Suharto's fall.
He received various awards and international recognition, including
France's Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and the Japanese
Fukuoka Asian Culture Grand Prize, both in 2000.
He also received the 1995 Ramon Magasasay Award for Journalism,
Literature and Creative Communication Arts and, in 1992, the PEN Freedom
to Write Award.
 Pramoedya on East Timor
Interview
with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!, 1999
AMY GOODMAN: May I ask what your thoughts are about
East Timor today?
PRAMOEDYA ANANTA TOER: [translated] The situation in
East Timor today is the result of mistaken and idiotic policy on
the part of the government. Here we have the imperialist
countries releasing their colonies, and Indonesia is going in
and occupying East Timor. I don't understand it at all.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you see hope of the occupation ending
and East Timor becoming independent?
PRAMOEDYA ANANTA TOER: [translated] In my personal
opinion, I think it should be free right now. Too much death has
taken place on that island, and for no reason whatsoever.
AMY GOODMAN: Do the people of Indonesia understand
that? Do they learn that as they're growing up?
PRAMOEDYA ANANTA TOER: [translated] Most Indonesians
are paying attention to their own problems. Even I, myself,
don't have time to give proper attention to the problem.
Coincidentally, however, my home, which was confiscated and
taken from me when I was exiled to Buru Island is now being used
as a temporary barracks by the military for the soldiers
returning from East Timor.
AMY GOODMAN: And the last question on Timor, and that
is, in East Timor we see now the Indonesian military arming
Timorese paramilitaries. Do you see parallels to other examples
in Indonesian politics or history? For the Timorese to kill the
Timorese?
PRAMOEDYA ANANTA TOER: [translated] This is no more
than a policy of cannibalism. It's primitive because Indonesia
gave up cannibalism 170 years ago. At the time, people killed
and ate other humans to take their power. Now, if you kill
villagers, their flesh is not eaten, but it's done so that one
feels stronger and bigger.
---
Salon: Indonesia's greatest novelist reflects on his
nation's upcoming election and on the crimes of his archenemy,
Suharto.
By Robert Templer
June 4, 1999
The government has signed an agreement with Portugal on
East Timor. Will the military let East Timor go?
The Indonesian army needs a target for all the weapons that
they have accumulated from abroad. East Timor should be free to
do what they feel they need to do. Indonesia should simply let
them go. But the army has been using them for target practice.
The irony of the situation is that Indonesia is a nation that
fought against foreign occupation, but it became an occupying
force. And this is again because of the army.
---
Call to the Young Generation/Students
Congratulations to you and your struggle!
With the achievement of your initial victory it is called for
here, for the sake of justice, truth and upholding Indonesian
human dignity, to carry out further efforts in every corner of
the motherland, including the New Order's occupied territory,
East Timor: to document families whose members have been
butchered, abducted and lost or returned, the theft of basic
rights including the rights to freedom, property, livelihood,
and self-defence against accusation and slander, that the New
Order has committed from 1965 to the present.
I'm with you!
Jakarta, May 22, 1998
Pramoedya Ananta Toer
---
Translator: Alex G. Bardsley
My Apologies, in the Name of Experience
Source:
Indonesia 61 (April 1996), 1--14
Both before and while [we were] on Buru the charge
continually spouted by the New Order, without ever showing
evidence, was [that we] wanted to change the Pancasila and the
'45 Constitution. Usually it was proclaimed in front of a rally
or during indoctrination. One of the principles of the Pancasila
is Just and Civilized Humanism. By the criterion of humanism,
even without the addition of "just and civilized/' their
treatment of us was quite disgusting, even sickening. The charge
of changing the Constitution? Once I heard an officer boast:
East Timor? Huh, in two days we can take it. And true, East
Timor was latter annexed, the eastern part of the island of
Timor that had never been claimed by the founders of the
Republic who composed the Constitution of '45. Those two charges
led me to the certain conclusion, that what they charged was
precisely what they were doing or wanted to do. Because a number
of events fit my conclusion, I was sometimes inclined to
consider it a formula. But later I softened it to: what is
stated as x is minus x. |
The Associated Press
April 30, 2006
Famed Author Pramoedya Ananta Toer Dies
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- Indonesian author Pramoedya Ananta Toer, an
outspoken democracy advocate who overcame imprisonment and censorship to
publish dozens of stories and novels about his country, died Sunday. He
was 81.
Pramoedya ''dedicated his whole life to this country through his
work,'' his daughter, Tatiana Ananta, told The associated Press.
''We all have lost a great father, a great author,'' she said. ''I am
very proud of him.''
Pramoedya -- jailed under successive regimes, including 14 years under
ex-dictator Suharto -- was nominated several times for a Nobel Prize in
literature and his 34 books and essays have been translated into 37
languages.
His best-known works -- the ''Buru Quartet'' novels about Indonesia's
independence struggle against the Dutch -- were written on scraps of paper
and surreptitiously smuggled out while he was imprisoned on the remote
island of Buru.
Age and deteriorating health -- combined with a sense of closure in his
work -- kept Pramoedya from writing since 2000, though he collaborated
with one of his daughters on an encyclopedia of Indonesia.
He was hospitalized on Thursday for complications brought on by
diabetes and heart disease. He was also a heavy smoker and had endured
years of abuse while in detention.
Pramoedya asked to leave Jakarta's Catholic St. Carolus Hospital late
Saturday, said his grandson, Kiki Sepitan.
Upon arriving home, the author immediately lit up a clove cigarette --
he was rarely seen without one -- and his condition deteriorated
overnight, he said.
Born in 1925 to a rice farmer during Dutch colonial rule, the eldest of
nine children criticized successive governments over more than a half
century, even in his last frail years. He reserved his harshest judgment
for Suharto, who was blamed for the death and imprisonment of more than a
million Indonesians.
But Pramoedya's ideas -- once a major influence fueling the
pro-democracy groundswell that toppled Suharto in 1998 -- have been
largely cast aside as Indonesia struggles to revive its economy, defeat
Islamic extremists responsible for a string of deadly bombings, and put
down separatist rebellions.
Indonesian author and journalist Goenawan Muhammad credited Pramoedya
with putting his nation on the world map of literature and called him ''an
important example of how freedom of speech and creativity is needed.''
Pramoedya was first jailed in 1947 by Dutch troops for being
''anti-colonialist.''
He was later accused of sympathizing with Chinese communists and
imprisoned again shortly after Suharto came to power in the aftermath of
the assassination of right-wing Indonesian generals in 1965.
Pramoedya's left-leaning, outspoken style earned him enemies within
Suharto's regime and his works were banned from circulation. He was thrown
in a cell without trial, first off the coast of mainland Java, and then in
the penal colony of Buru, along with thousands of other opponents of the
U.S.-backed regime.
Pramoedya advocated the removal of bureaucrats and politicians
''tainted'' by Suharto-era abuses, but corruption remains rampant and some
of the old dictator's cronies remain in office.
He also wanted an inclusive government that welcomed people from parts
of the sprawling Indonesian archipelago outside the main island of Java,
but the Javanese still hold the reins of power.
''I am half blind and almost totally deaf, but I won't stop being angry
because not many people are outraged enough at the state of Indonesia,''
he told The AP in 2004.
see also: TAPOL:
Memories of Pramoedya Ananta Toer
|
Order Books by Pramoedya and Support ETAN |
 Exile: Conversations with Pramoedya
Ananta Toer
by Pramoedya Ananta Toer
Publisher Comments
Fascinating... endlessly sad.-Noam
Chomsky In these remarkable
interviews with Andre Vltchek and
Rossie Indira, edited by Nagesh Rao,
Indonesia's most celebrated writer
speaks out against tyranny and
injustice in a young and troubled
nation. Toer here... (read
more)
Your Price
$16.00
(New - Trade Paper)
available May
2006
|
Tales from Djakarta
by Pramoedya Ananta Toer
Tales from Djakarta is a collection of thirteen short stories
written between 1948 and 1956 - a period of bitter transition
from the revolutionary era to the beginnings of military rule in
Indonesia. These stories not only give us a taste of Pramoedya's...
(read
more)
Your Price
$24.95
(New - Trade Paper) |
The Girl from the Coast
by Pramoedya Anan Toer
Coming of age in feudal Java, where women are regarded as property,
a young woman from a fishing village is given in marriage to a
wealthy aristocrat, only to learn that she is to be discarded and
separated from her children. By the author of The Mute's... (read
more)
List Price $13.50
Your Price
$6.98
|
All That Is Gone
by Pramoedya Anan Toer
Pramoedya's semi-autobiographical stories deal with life's major
themes: birth and death, sexual knowledge and love, compassion and
revenge. This is the first time Pramoedya's short fiction has been
widely available to the English reading public; its... (read
more)
List Price $15.00
Your Price
$7.98
(Sale - Trade Paper)
|
Child of All Nations (90 Edition)
by Pramoedya A. Toer
List Price
$15.00
Your Price
$8.00
(Used - Trade Paper) |
This Earth of Mankind (90 Edition)
by Pramoedya Anan Toer
This Earth of Mankind, the first novel in Pramoedya Ananta Toer's
series known as the Buru Quartet, tells of the adventures of Minke,
a young Javanese student living equally amongst the Dutch colonists
and the colonized Javanese of late nineteenth... (read
more)
List Price $15.00
Your Price
$8.00
(Used - Trade Paper)
|
Fugitive
by Pramoedya Anan Toer
Your Price
$6.50
(Used - Trade Paper)
|
Footsteps
by Pramoedya Anan Toer
List Price $15.00
Your Price
$7.50
(Used - Trade Paper) |
The Mute's Soliloquy: A Memoir
by Pramoedya Anan Toer
The author was exiled in 1965 by Indonesian authorities to the penal
island of Buru, where he was imprisoned for 11 years. He not only
survived under brutal conditions, but went on to write novels,
essays and letters that comprise this moving memoir.... (read
more)
List Price $16.00
Your Price
$7.95
(Used - Trade Paper)
|
House of Glass
by Pramoedya Anan Toer
List Price $15.00
Your Price
$6.98
(Sale - Trade Paper) |
|
Order books from Powells & support ETAN! Above
are books we don't distribute. ETAN earns money on all sales as
long as you shop starting with this page. Questions email: etan@etan.org.
Don't forget to browse
ETAN's own
bookstore.
|
| |
Sydney Morning Herald
May 16, 2006
Man of Letters and Revolution
Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Novelist, 1925-2006
By Max Lane
IN THE days before Indonesia's greatest novelist, Pramoedya Ananta Toer,
died, text messages and emails had warned that he was seriously ill. Many
readers gathered at his hospital bed and later his home where they sang
songs of struggle or prayed.
I met Pramoedya in 1980 after reading his wonderful novel, This Earth of
Mankind, which I was to later translate. It was the first of many meetings
with an earthy, stubborn man who deeply loved Indonesia and the revolution
that created it, its history, and its people.
He wrote more than 40 works, including novels, short stories, plays,
history, literary criticism and more than 400 newspaper essays. He
translated Gorky, Tolstoy and Steinbeck, among others. All this work was
motivated by a love for humanity. He never tired of quoting from the great
Dutch novelist, Multatuli: "It is the duty of human beings to become human."
Pramoedya was born in Blora, central Java, the eldest son of a headmaster
and activist. Pramoedya, or Pram as he was more usually known, had just
completed his education in Indonesia's second city, Surabaya, in 1942 when
the Japanese invaded. Like many Indonesian nationalists who disliked the
Dutch, he initially supported the occupation.
His attitude changed as Japanese brutality intensified, and he became
increasingly nationalist. After the war, as the Dutch tried to reassert
control over their former empire, Pramoedya took up arms in the resistance
movement. He was detained for the first time in 1947, the year he wrote his
first novel, The Fugitive.
Release came with the Dutch withdrawal in 1949 and he spent much of the
1950s travelling abroad, including Holland, the Soviet Union and China. His
early works - novels, short stories and essays - were explorations of the
many sides of humanity that are exposed in time of war and revolution. By
the mid-1950s, when he began to understand that the ideals of the revolution
- justice and prosperity - were not being realised, his stories turned to
exposing the revolution's betrayal by corruption and elitism.
In the late 1950s, he started to travel down a path that made him unique
in Indonesian culture and politics, and which paved the way for the six
great historical novels setting out the crucial chapters in Indonesia's
pre-history. He began a search for the origins of the blockages to the
revolution in the archipelago's history, going back 1000 years.
He also discovered the origins of Indonesia's original radical energies
in the confrontation between the ideals of humanism and Western hypocrisy
and dictatorship - that is, colonialism - at the turn of the 20th century.
One story from a former student symbolises his respect for the people.
Pramoedya lectured at a university in 1965 before he was arrested with about
100,000 other left-wing Indonesians in 1965 - perhaps more than half a
million were murdered at the same time. The student's assignment was to
interview a source about a prominent political figure. Instead, he
interviewed a colleague of the political figure. Reprimanded and told to do
the assignment again, he had to admit that Pramoedya's source turned out to
be a much richer source of information - the political figure's barber.
In the late 1950s, as corruption and elitist contempt for the plight of
the people strengthened, Pramoedya joined the tens of millions of
Indonesians who supported President Soekarno's call for the nation to
concentrate on finishing the revolution. Until his death, he remained a
committed supporter of Soekarno, whom he considered able to unite Indonesia
by ideas, not weapons.
Pramoedya plunged into the cultural struggle writing prolifically for the
independent left-wing daily paper, Bintang Timor. He polemicised against
what he saw as imported salon art, which ignored the struggle to complete
the revolution, to bring ordinary people to power. But mostly, he wrote
about history, about people whom he thought official history had forgotten
or misunderstood.
He wrote about the 19th century feminist, Kartini, turn-of-the-century
novelists, communist novelists and the first indigenous newspaper editor,
Tirto Adhisuryo.
Pramoedya was jailed for a year in 1960 for writing a book defending the
Chinese community against discrimination.
Pramoedya's open partisanship with Soekarno and the left saw him
imprisoned when Soeharto took power in October 1965. He spent the next 14
years in jails, never charged and never tried.
He was shipped with thousands of others to Buru island, a sparsely
inhabited island in eastern Indonesia. The trip to Buru and other
experiences there are evocatively told in the collection of essays, A Mute's
Soliloquy.
Books, pens and paper were banned for prisoners during the first several
years on Buru. Men were killed for holding reading matter. The 14,000
prisoners had to build their own barracks and clear their own fields with
their bare hands, and eat field mice - after deworming them.
Pramoedya had lost his immense library of archives, tapes and documents,
and did not have even pen or paper. So he told and retold some of his
stories, starting with that of Sanikem, the 14-year-old Javanese girl sold
by her father to a Dutch businessman as a concubine. The girl overcomes this
horror to stand above her Dutch kidnapper, a woman of great character, a
successful business person and teacher of the ideals of the Enlightenment.
This story provided the framework for This Earth of Mankind, the first in
a series of four novels inspired by the life and times of Tirto Adhisuryo,
the man Pramoedya considered the pioneer of Indonesia's national awakening.
The other novels, Child of All Nations, Footsteps and House of Glass, are
rich and humane, gripping and revolutionary, telling the story of how
Indonesia and Indonesians came into being.
These great stories have resonated around the world. Penguin Books in
Australia, under Brian Johns, took the risk in the 1980s of being the first
major commercial publisher of these works, which have been translated into
more than 50 languages.
The novels were published in Indonesia in the 1980s, almost immediately
after Pramoedya and thousands of other political prisoners were released. In
a stunning act of defiance, Pramoedya and fellow ex-political prisoners,
Joesoef Isak and Hasyim Rachman, both journalists, established a publishing
company, Hasta Mitra.
But Soeharto later banned the books, after each volume was published.
They even banned anthologies of turn of the century short stories, because
Pramoedya had edited them. Three student activists were given long prison
sentences for selling the books from a folding table.
Even after Soeharto's fall, Pramoedya's books remain banned. Yet they are
in all the bookshops and sold at every activist or public cultural event.
Neither Indonesia nor the world has yet fully appreciated his
contribution. The four novels that began with This Earth of Mankind, now
known as the Buru Quartet, represent a great literary achievement, while
being just part of the series of six novels and one play that make up his
fictional presentation of Indonesian history.
Pramoedya is survived by his second wife, Maemunah, with whom he had five
children. He had three children from his first marriage, 16 grandchildren
and three great-grandchildren.
Max Lane is the translator of the Buru Quartet.
see also
Pramoedya Ananta Toer
(Indonesia's great novelist) website
Pramoedya
Ananta Toer's Page
Back to May menu
April menu
World Leaders Contact List
Main Postings Menu
|
