This Earth of Mankind [Paperback]

This is indeed a book about mankind; our eyes and mind are brought face to face with the humiliation and the joy of the book's main character, a son of a nobel Javanese who is struggling to find an identity, despite his naivete of European superiority (the story took place at the closing of the 19th century, when colonialization was in place). The word, 'modern,' was not yet in the dictionary, and Pramoedya expands to give us an unforgettable experience of seeing science unravel its power in front of mankind, for better or for worse, through the eyes of his main character. We are forced to question ourselves of our own identity, our own deeds, our own laws that govern our land, our own suffering, and our own opression on our fellow mankind. Finally, we are once again faced with the sour reality of mankind when Pramoedya twists the story toward an unexpected and sad but brave ending.

I am an Indonesian who had been educated by text books written and mandated by the Indonesian government, the new ruler on the East Indies, the land that Pramoedya's epic story took place. I am amazed, marveled, transcended by the way Pramoedya revealed to me the secret of our culture, the reasons why my ancestors submitted to colonialization for more than three centuries. Pramoedya has opened the eyes of my soul to see the things surrounding my culture and my country, its history and its effort to come to terms with colonialization more closely, more vigilantly.

Pramoedya's writing is truly unique, and his insight toward mankind, cultural differences, and whatever else that has brought us near the end of this century is completely powerful. Now, almost exactly 100 years later than when the story took place, many of the wisdom and sorrow Pramoedya writes about still hold place. Truly.

The first of the Buru Quartet books, I recommend this book to any man and woman, of any nation and culture.

A novel with the fine distinction of having been hated by both
the Dutch and the Indonesian Government. An indictment both of
imperialism and of post-imperial power and politics. This also
happens to be a well-written & subtle love story, complete with
cliff-hanger at the end.

Have I mentioned that it is based on stories composed by the
author while he was in prison?

When a book becomes a historical, social or political artefact it is difficult for it to be judged objectively as a piece of literature. The Buru Quartet has enormous status as a political entity, and as a symbol of all that the liberal world holds dear. The story behind the books is an epic in itself: a writer, a hero of the Indonesian revolution, falls from favour under a new military regime; he is imprisoned without trial for his political beliefs; he survives a decade of confinement; for years he has no access to pen or paper, but he recites the first volumes of his masterpiece orally to fellow prisoners; eventually the work is written down, eventually he is released and the books published, only to be abruptly banned by the same despotic government. By the time Indonesia emerged into democracy and Pramoedya's books returned to the shelves, the Buru Quartet was an exalted work, inevitably appended with superlative epithets. But no matter how astonishing the back-story, no matter how ambitious the scope and scale, it is important for the Quartet to be critically appraised, for as fiction and literature it is deeply flawed.
The first three books are narrated by Minke, an educated Javanese, a writer and journalist. It is in Minke himself that a key problem of the entire Quartet is most apparent: an abject failure of characterisation. There is little real feeling of Minke's development and changing ideas. There is no real sense of him maturing as a character through the course of the books. As a voice he remains sketchy and indistinct, and at times rather hard to believe in (for example in his rather troubling ability to speak every language under the sun with the exception of Chinese, without, apparently ever having to learn them).
In the enormous cast of individuals who people the book there are very few who take real shape. Bad people are only revealed as bad with clumsy, pantomime dialogue; bit player after bit player speaks in exactly the same voice. This is particularly the case when it comes to the women of the books. Pramoedya railed against much of traditional Javanese culture, and a key theme of the books is the power and importance of women in the history of the Indies. But perhaps the Javanese sense of ideal womanhood was too deeply ingrained in him. Minke's first wife, Annelies, is intended as a beguiling, fragrant figure. Instead she is an irksome epitome of demure 19th Century womanhood. She is intensely annoying, given to fainting and taking to her bed at moments of mild stress, and she eventually expires, apparently from no disease other than an excess of delicate femininity. Minke's second wife, Mei, a young Chinese revolutionary appears at first a more solid figure. But scarcely has she met Minke than she too takes to her bed and begins to waste demurely away. His allegedly formidable third wife is barely even a silhouette of a real character and she speaks in precisely the same cloying voice as the others. Even the real-life Kartini resembles this same vague and delicately female outline when she makes a cameo.
The exception to all this of course is the mighty Nyai Ontosoroh, a formidable and brilliant figure, and one of the few real characters of the entire work. It should have been she who was the central figure of the books throughout (alas, Pramoedya was not great enough a writer to truly convey the sense of the dalang, the master - or mistress - behind the scenes).

The strained circumstances of the books' creation and eventual appearance make it very unlikely that the manuscripts ever met the red pen of a professional editor: it shows. Some brutal expurgating could probably cut the length by half, yet keep all the integrity, and make it far more readable. As a fictional rendering of the historical birth of Indonesian identity it is a mighty undertaking. But all too often, especially in the shambolic third book, all attempts at proper literary story-telling are abandoned for half a dozen pages of badly written historical background. And at times throughout the books the writing itself is astonishingly poor. The prose is often startlingly clunky and amateurish - though it is of course difficult to know if this is an accurate reflection of the original, or merely the inadequacies of the translator.
A writer of fiction dealing with real historical events faces a considerable challenge. Some succeed by making their protagonist a minor, inconsequential character, or by fictionalising a real figure. But Pramoedya placed invented persons at the heart of things, and in doing this he is largely successful and the tweaking of real historical events that this necessitates does not jar. But there are some needless historical inaccuracies, for example, the background information about the Balinese resistance to Dutch conquest in book three - which has no bearing on central characters or story - is largely plain wrong...
As a story the first book is strongest; it is in the final book that voice and character succeeds. Minke is replaced as narrator by Pangemanann, and he is far more palpable a figure, his tormented, compromised soul far easier to feel and believe (though like book three the final volume does have some excruciating longeurs). Alongside Nyai Ontosoroh he is almost alone as a true character in the whole work - in its translation at least. And this is perhaps a large part of the problem - in the original character and narrative is driven by use of language, of tone and inference, of different tongues, and this is unavoidably lost in translation.

The Buru Quartet is a hugely important work in both Indonesian literature and history, and it deserves to be read by any eager student of that nation. It stands for something crucial too. But no matter what its importance or political aims no work of literature earns the right to shrug aside its responsibility to be just that - literature and readable fiction - and in this, to some extent, the Quartet fails.