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Pramoedya Ananta Toer is widely considered as one of the most prolific authors in the history of Indonesian literature. He was born in Blora, in the heartland of Java, in 1925 as the eldest son in his family. His father was a teacher and his mother was a rice trader. He went on to the Radio Vocational School in Surabaya and worked as a typist for a Japanese newspaper in Jakarta during the Japanese occupation of Indonesia.
Upon the Indonesian Independence, he joined a paramilitary group in Java and eventually was stationed in Jakarta at the end of the independence war. He wrote short stories and books throughout his military career and was imprisoned by the Dutch in Jakarta in 1948 and 1949. In the 1950s he was able to live in the Netherlands as part of a cultural exchange program, and upon his return he became a member of Lekra, a left-wing organization in Indonesia. His writing style changed during this time, as evidenced in his story Korupsi, a critical fiction of a civil servant who fell onto the trap of corruption. This created friction between him and the government of Sukarno.
During this time, he began to learn of the persecutions against the Indonesian Chinese, and at the same time began to be closely connected to authors in China. Most notably, he published a series of correspondence with a Chinese author discussing the history of the Indonesian Chinese, called Hoakiau di Indonesia. He was critical of a Java-centric government insensitive to the needs and desires of the other regions in Indonesia, and famously suggested that the capital be moved outside of Java. In the 1960s he was imprisoned by Suharto's government for his pro-Communist China views. His books were banned from circulation, and he was imprisoned without trial first in Nusa Kambangan off the coast of Java, and later in the eastern Indonesian colonies.
He was banned from writing during his imprisonment on the Buru island, but still managed to write his best-known series of work to date called Bumi Manusia or This Earth of Mankind, a series of 4 semi-fictional novels chronicling the history of Indonesia. The main character Minke, an Javanese minor royal, was mirrored upon his own personal experience. The first volume was recited orally to his fellow prisoners, and the remainder was smuggled out of the country to be collected by an Australian author and then published in English and Indonesian.
Pramoedya was released from imprisonment in 1979 and was placed under house arrest in Jakarta until 1992. During this time he wrote The Girl From the Coast, another semi-fictional novel based on his grandmother's own experience. He also wrote Nyanyi Sunyi Seorang Bisu or A Mute's Soliloqui (1995), an autobiography based on the letters that he wrote for his daughter but were not allowed to be sent, and Arus Balik (1995).
More recently, he has written many columns and short articles criticizing the current Indonesian government. He wrote a book Perawan Remaja dalam Cengkraman Militer or Young Virgins in the Military's Grip, a documentary written in the style of a novel showcasing the plight of Javanese women who were forced to become comfort women during the Japanese occupation. They were brought to the island of Buru where they were allegedly sexually abused, and ended up staying there instead of returning to Java. Pramoedya made their acquaintance when he himself was a political prisoner on the Buru island in the 1970s.
Many of his writings touch on the subject of inter-cultural interactions; between the Dutch, the Javanese royalty, the common Javanese, and the Chinese. Many of his writings are also semi-autobiographical, where he draws on his own experiences. He is still active as a writer and columnist today, and he was awarded the 1995 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communication Arts. He has also been considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He also won the 2000 11th Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize and most recently the 2004 Norwegian Authors' Union award for his contribution to world literature and his continuous struggle for the right to freedom of expression. He completed a tour of North America in 1999 and won awards from the University of Michigan.
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