Toer, Pramoedya Ananta

New York. 1993. Morrow. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0688127266. Translated from the Indonesian by Max Lane. 352 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Paul Bacon. keywords: Indonesia Asia Translated Literature Java. FROM THE PUBLISHER - Not only is Pramoedya a writer of staggerlng depth and power, he is also one of his country's most suppressed dissidents. All his work is banned in his native Indonesia; students have been sentenced to eight years in prison on charges stemming from an arrest for selling his books. In CHILD OF ALL NATIONS, the reader is immediately swept up by a story that is profoundly feminist, devastatingly anti-colonialist - and full of heartbreak, suspense, love, and fury Pramoedya immerses the reader in a world that is astonishing in its vividness: the cultural whirlpool that was the Dutch East Indies of the 1890s. A story of awakening, it follows Minke, the main character of This Earth of Mankind , as he struggles to overcome the injustice all around him. Pramoedya's full literary genius is evident in the brilliant characters that populate this world: Minke's fragile Mixed-Race wife; a young Chinese revolutionary; an embattled Javanese peasant and his impoverished family; the French painterJean Marais, to name just a few. CHILD OF ALL NATIONS is the second in a series of four novels often called the Buru tetralogy. The Buru tetralogy was composed orally on Burn Island during the first half of the author's fourteen-year imprisonment with- out trial. Writing or reading anything but religious texts was strictly forbidden. Pramoedya would tell each installment to the people with whom he shared his hut; they in turn would tell others until the thousands of political prisoners held on Buru knew the story. In the latter half of his imprisonment, Pramoedya was allowed to write the novels he had composed orally. inventory #25639 ISBN: 0688127266.