Pramoedya Ananta Toer

Author

• Born: February 6, 1925
• Birthplace: Blora, East Java, Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia)
• Died: April 30, 2006
• Place of death: Jakarta, Indonesia

Biography

Pramoedya Ananta Toer was born in 1925 in Blora, East Java, then part of the Dutch East Indies, which is now Indonesia. His father was the principal of the local school. The elder Toer was a nationalist and an obsessive gambler. Toer’s main influence in life was his mother, a rice grower and batik maker, who died of tuberculosis at the age of thirty-four. Toer finished elementary school in 1939 and moved to Surabaya to enroll in a radio vocational school, which he completed in 1941, just before the Japanese invasion of the islands.

Like many other nationalists, Toer was prepared to work for the Japanese at first. He worked as a stenographer for a Japanese newspaper based in Jakarta, the largest city in the Dutch East Indies. Immediately following the Japanese defeat, the nationalists proclaimed independence from the Dutch. Thus began the National Revolution, which lasted until 1949, when the Dutch allowed the communist sympathizer, Sukarno, to take control as president of the newly independent nation of Indonesia.

During the conflict, Toer was imprisoned by the Dutch in Bukit Duri for two years. Here he wrote his first major novel, Perburuan, translated later as The Fugitive, which earned him the Balai Putaska prize. From the start he was determined to write in the local language of Bahasa Indonesia. On his release from detention, he followed his first book with Keluarga gerilja: Kisah keluarga manusia dalam tiga hari tiga malam, an anticolonial novel. He married at this time, a marriage that would produce one daughter.

After independence, Toer worked as editor for several magazines and a publishing house. He also translated various American and Russian authors into Indonesian. His own left-wing views became more pronounced, although he never joined the Communist Party. He expressed these views in articles and essays in various newspapers and journals, some of which criticized the inefficiency and corruption of the government. His story “Korupsi” (corruption) also deals with this topic.

Toer lived in Holland briefly and visited China, becoming sympathetic to the plight of the Indonesian Chinese. He wrote on their behalf, earning him a nine-month detention from the government. On his release, he continued as literary editor of a left-wing daily newspaper and became a lecturer in Indonesian at the University of Res Publika.

The right-wing Suharto ousted Sukarno in 1965 and established the “New Order.” Toer was arrested as a left-wing intellectual. His papers were destroyed and he was severely beaten, leading to loss of hearing. He was sent to the island of Buru, where under very difficult conditions he heroically managed to complete the Buru tetralogy, four historical novels dealing with the country’s recent past. They were published between 1980 and 1982. Although banned in Indonesia, they were translated and won praise abroad.

Toer was eventually released in 1979, but he was confined to the city of Jakarta until 1992. He continued to write prolifically, his works being translated into many languages. He received awards and honors from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Norway, among other countries. He was also considered as a possible nominee for the Nobel Prize for Literature. He died in 2006.