SOURCE: Pramoedya Ananta, Toer, and Chris GoGwilt. “Pramoedya's Fiction and History: An Interview with Indonesian Novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer.” Yale Journal of Criticism 9, no. 1 (spring 1996): 147-64.

In the following interview, originally conducted on January 16, 1995, Pramoedya discusses the influences on his novels, aspects of his recent work, and the major features of his Buru Tetralogy.

A Note on Pramoedya Ananta Toer

Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Indonesia's leading prose writer, was born in Blora, Java in 1925, and lives now in Jakarta under city arrest. Pramoedya's renown as a fiction-writer was established in the years following Indonesian independence. The Fugitive, about the resistance against Japanese occupation in 1945, was written during imprisonment under the Dutch between 1947 and 1949. From 1950 to 1965, Pramoedya played an increasingly important role in Indonesian literature. In 1958 he became a member of Lekra, the Institute of People's Culture, which championed the radical nationalist ideals of the 1945 revolution. In the first half...