Books by Pramoedya Ananta Toer

5. Pramoedya Ananta Toer, This Earth of Mankind , volume one of the Buru Quartet.  These are the greatest books which most educated people never read, and I am giving them a reread.  So far volume one is as good as I remember it, maybe better.  I think of the set as an extended, four-volume meditation, by an Indonesian political prisoner, on what a life really consists of.  Here is a short essay on the quartet .

5. Pramoedya Ananta Toer, The Mute’s Soliloquy .  The first third is a superb humane and philosophical response to adversity, namely imprisonment on Buru Island.  Of the rest, which is never sent letters to his family, at least half is very good.