Join us for a book talk on Indonesia Out of Exile: How Pramoedya’s Buru Quartet Killed a Dictatorship with author Max Lane, who translated Pramoedya’s novels to English.

In 1981, a new company, Hasta Mitra, founded by three men just released from over a decade in prison, published a novel written in a prison camp by Pramoedya Ananta Toer. The novel was This Earth of Mankind. It told the story of the early gestation of the Indonesian national awakening. The dictatorship eventually banned it after several months of tactical struggle by the three men, Pramoedya himself and the fighters of Hasta Mitra, Joeoef Isak and Hasyim Rachman. In defiance of the dictatorship, they went on to publish the three sequels to This Earth of Mankind, each time followed by another battle and then a ban.This event will be held in-person and streamed on our YouTube. If attending this event in person, please be prepared to show proof of vaccination upon entry.