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Indonesia Out of Exile

How Pramoedya’s Buru Quartet Killed a Dictatorship

Max Lane
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In 1981, a new company, Hasta Mitra, founded by three men just released from over a decade in prison, published a novel written in a prison camp by Pramoedya Ananta Toer. The novel was This Earth of Mankind. It told the story of the early gestation of the Indonesian national awakening. The dictatorship eventually banned it after several months of tactical struggle by the three men, Pramoedya himself and the fighters of Hasta Mitra, Joeoef Isak and Hasyim Rachman. In defiance of the dictatorship, they went on to publish the three sequels to This Earth of Mankind, each time followed by another battle and then a ban.

This book tells of these men’s struggle, their arrests and imprisonment-the story of the writing of Pramoedya’s novels in Buru Island prison camp. They return from exile to a different Indonesia, its radical past suppressed and its people terrorised. Pramoedya’s epic novels starting with This Earth of Mankind then explodes onto the scene. Set in a time when even the idea of Indonesia had not yet formed, the book tells an inspiring creation story. The story of that early struggle and of the amazing effort to publish Pramoedya’s novels in the face of repression inspired a new generation of youth who succeeded in breaking the dictatorship. Today, a new generation is being inspired by those same books. So what comes next?

Published: Nov/2022

ISBN: 9789814914178

Length: 240 Pages

Indonesia Out of Exile

How Pramoedya’s Buru Quartet Killed a Dictatorship

Max Lane

In 1981, a new company, Hasta Mitra, founded by three men just released from over a decade in prison, published a novel written in a prison camp by Pramoedya Ananta Toer. The novel was This Earth of Mankind. It told the story of the early gestation of the Indonesian national awakening. The dictatorship eventually banned it after several months of tactical struggle by the three men, Pramoedya himself and the fighters of Hasta Mitra, Joeoef Isak and Hasyim Rachman. In defiance of the dictatorship, they went on to publish the three sequels to This Earth of Mankind, each time followed by another battle and then a ban.

This book tells of these men’s struggle, their arrests and imprisonment-the story of the writing of Pramoedya’s novels in Buru Island prison camp. They return from exile to a different Indonesia, its radical past suppressed and its people terrorised. Pramoedya’s epic novels starting with This Earth of Mankind then explodes onto the scene. Set in a time when even the idea of Indonesia had not yet formed, the book tells an inspiring creation story. The story of that early struggle and of the amazing effort to publish Pramoedya’s novels in the face of repression inspired a new generation of youth who succeeded in breaking the dictatorship. Today, a new generation is being inspired by those same books. So what comes next?

Buying Options
Paperback / Hardback
Amazon

Max Lane

Max Lane has been engaged with Indonesia for over 50 years. In the 1970s, he translated W.S. Rendra's play The Struggle of the Naga Tribe, which was performed in English in Australia and Malaysia. He spent time with Rendra's group, Bengkel Teater. In the 1980s, he worked in the Australian Embassy in Jakarta when he started translating Pramoedya Ananta Toer's This Earth of Mankind and its three sequels, together now known as the Buru Quartet. He was withdrawn from the Embassy by the Australian government for translating these banned books. He later translated Pramoedya's novel, Arok Dedes and historical work, The Chinese in Indonesia. Upon returning to Australia, he helped found the Inside Indonesia magazine and became its first editor. In the 1990s, he actively supported the democracy movements in Indonesia and East Timor and as a journalist wrote hundreds of articles about Indonesia. He has written several books on Indonesia, including Unfinished Nation: Indonesia Before and After Suharto, Catastrophe in Indonesia, An Introduction to the Politics of the Indonesian Union Movement and Indonesia and Not, Poems and Otherwise: Anecdotes Scattered.

Some have been published in Indonesian alongside other original writings. He has lectured at the University of Sydney and Victoria University and at universities in Indonesia, Southeast Asia, Europe, and the United States. He has been a research fellow at Murdoch University, the National University of Singapore, and the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies-Yusof Isak Institute, also in Singapore. He is married to Indonesian playwright and theatre producer, Faiza Mardzoeki.