![]() ![]() Penguin will reissue the first three volumes of the Buru quartet in paperback to coincide with the publication of House of Glass. (May) FYI: Pramoedya is currently under city arrest in Jakarta: all his books remain banned in Indonesia. Here, by filtering the anti-colonialist struggle through Pangemanann's ambivalent, warped perspective, Pramoedya spikes his epic saga with slyly modernist irony, creating a work that is as subversive today as when it was written. ![]() The first three volumes of Pramoedya's quartet (This Earth of Mankind Child of All Nations Footsteps)-written during the author's 14-year banishment, 1965-1979, to the prison island of Buru-were narrated by Minke, a progressive witness of world events. Yet, as an obedient tool of the Netherlands Indies' ruling elite in the period from 1912 through the end of WWI, Pangemanann feels duty-bound to crush Minke and the native movement he represents, whether by arrest, torture or counterinsurgency terrorism. ![]() House of Glass by Pramoedya Ananta Toer Literary Fiction. Recognizing the rottenness of the colonial administration, he greatly admires Minke, crusading newspaper editor and nationalist fighter against Dutch imperialism, considering him a man of principle. With House Of Glass comes the final chapter of Pramoedyas epic quartet, set in the Dutch. Police commissioner Tuan Pangemanann, narrator of this concluding volume to Pramoedya's extraordinary tetralogy set in colonial Indonesia, is a Sorbonne-educated reactionary, a consummate hypocrite, a cultivated monster, a sadist with pangs of conscience. ![]()
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