Pramoedya Ananta Toer: Hundred years of a fearless Indonesian literary icon

In a 2005 documentary made on his life by a Norwegian admirer of his work, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, one of the greatest literary chroniclers of the 20th century, recalls an anecdote surrounding his arrest in 1965. Right before Sukarno (1901–1970) was overthrown by a military coup, in September 1965 (with active support from the Eisenhower administration of the United States and the CIA) a secret police officer of the emerging right-wing regime of Suharto (1921–2008) would often visit the house of Pram, as Pramoedya has been affectionately called by his admirers. By then, Pramoedya had already established himself as a leading writer and journalist in the fledgling nation. The political criticism was always subtle and wisely implicit in his writings, but Pram’s (as he was popularly called) left-leaning views were well known, especially through his position as the head of the People’s Cultural Organisation, a cultural wing of Indonesia’s Communist Party (PKI). Pramoedya narrates how after the September coup, the secret police officer, who was till then disguising himself as a friend and well-wisher of the family, became blunter in expressing the agenda of the new regime. He said, “Brother Pram, the situation has changed now, I am now the...

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