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Early 1900s: The second of the Tetralogi Buru Series
Early 1900s: The second of the Tetralogi Buru Series
In Child of All Nations, the reader is immediately swept up by a story that is profoundly feminist, devastatingly anticolonialist—and full of heartbreak, suspense, love, and fury. Pramoedya immerses the reader in a world that is astonishing in its vividness: the cultural whirlpool that was the Dutch East Indies of the 1890s. A story of awakening, it follows Minke, the main character of This Earth of Mankind, as he struggles to overcome the injustice all around him.
The Buru tetralogy was composed orally on Buru Island during the first half of the author’s fourteen-year imprisonment without trial. Writing or reading anything but religious texts was strictly forbidden. Pramoedya would tell each installment to the people with whom he shared his hut; they in turn would tell others until the thousands of political prisoners held on Buru knew the story. In the latter half of his imprisonment, Pramoedya was allowed to write the novels he had composed orally.
Destination: Indonesia Author/guide: Pramoedya Ananta Toer Departure Time: 1890s, 1900s
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