Cerita dari Digul (Tales from Digul)

Cerita dari Digul (Tales from Digul)
Pramoedya Ananta Toer (Editor)
Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia (KPG), Jakarta, 2001
xxiii + 314 pp

Digul, located in what is now the province of Irian Jaya,
earned a place in the country's history books for the Indonesian
freedom fighters who were banished there by the Dutch colonial
rulers.

Tales From Digul is a collection of five stories about life in
this land of exile. The stories are simple but touching.

In the first story, Rustam the Digulist, the title character,
after being freed from exile, proposes to the girlfriend he left
behind, Cindai. But her family does not want her to marry the
former Digulist.

So, the couple elope. Later, however, they separate and when a
judge asks her if she loves Rustam, Cindai simply says she does
not.

The other four stories in this collection describe the lost
loves, narrow escapes from death, cruelty and ostracism that were
common to the exiles.

Critically, the stories have few literary merits. They are
valuable, however, in showing the younger generations how our
independence was won. Tears and blood, love and lives -- they
were all sacrificed for the sake of independence. It is on this
point that Pramoedya Ananta Toer must be praised for his efforts
in collecting and editing these stories.

-- Lie Hua