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Overview
From the author of the Buru Quartet and one of the greatest writers of our time comes a remarkable memoir of imprisonment and survival.In 1965, Pramoedya Ananta Toer was detained by Indonesian authorities and eventually exiled to the penal island of Buru. Without a formal accusation or trial, the onetime national hero was imprisoned on Buru for eleven years. He survived under brutal conditions, somehow managing to produce his masterwork, the four novels of the Buru Quartet, as well as the remarkable journal entries, essays, and letters that comprise this moving memoir.
Reminiscent of the work of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Mute's Soliloquy is a harrowing portrait of a penal colony and a heartbreaking remembrance of life before it. With a resonance far beyond its particular time and place, it is Pramoedya's crowning achievement--a passionate tribute to the freedom of the mind and a celebration of the human spirit.
"A haunting record of a great writer's attempt to keep his imagination and his humanity alive."-- The New York Times Book Review
"A story too vast and serious to ignore."-- San Francisco Chronicle (front page review)
Synopsis
In 1965, Pramoedya Ananta Toer was a hero of the Indonesian revolution and widely regarded as one of the best writers the country had ever produced. That year, however, as Indonesia embarked on a period of intense social unrest, Pramoedya and tens of thousands of others were detained and eventually exiled to the remote island of Buru. Imprisoned on Buru for eleven years without trial or formal accusation, Pramoedya and his fellow prisoners were forced to clear dense tracts of jungle, build camps, and forage for food. They died by the hundreds of starvation, brutality, and disease. Whether he is narrating the story of a fellow prisoner, remembering the dead and the missing, discussing what is means to be a citizen, or giving advise to his children in letters he knew they would never receive, Pramoedya's courage, integrity, and commitment to social justice are in powerful evidence.
Jonathan Rosen
...[A] sprawling literary [mansion]....[It displays] the mysteries of a foreign culture while magically containing rooms that seem designed with you in mind....This is not a book from which to gain a clear picture of modern Indonesian history or of Pramaoedya's place in it....a haunting record of a great writer's attempt to keep his imagination and his humanity alive under terrible conditions. —The New York Times Book Review
Editorials
Jonathan Rosen
...[A] sprawling literary [mansion]....[It displays] the mysteries of a foreign culture while magically containing rooms that seem designed with you in mind....This is not a book from which to gain a clear picture of modern Indonesian history or of Pramaoedya's place in it....a haunting record of a great writer's attempt to keep his imagination and his humanity alive under terrible conditions. —The New York Times Book ReviewUSA Today
Here is an author half a world away from us whose art and humanity are both so great that we instantly feel we've known him — and he us — all our lives.Jonathan Rosen
...[A] sprawling literary [mansion]....[It displays] the mysteries of a foreign culture while magically containing rooms that seem designed with you in mind....This is not a book from which to gain a clear picture of modern Indonesian history or of Pramaoedya's place in it....a haunting record of a great writer's attempt to keep his imagination and his humanity alive under terrible conditions.br>— The New York Times Book ReviewUSA Today
Here is an author half a world away from us whose art and humanity are both so great that we instantly feel we've known him -- and he us -- all our lives.Louis Francia
A piercingly vivid, extraordinarily eloquent work.—The Village Voice