Pramoedya still going strong at 80
Pramoedya still going strong at 80
Evi Mariani, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
"I don't know what to say," novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer,
overwhelmed by the moment, finally uttered at his 80th birthday
party with family and friends on Sunday afternoon.
After giving a brief thank you to all the people who came to
his birthday, he sat down and wiped the tears from his eyes.
The frail writer has to walk with the aid of a stick. He also
has difficulty hearing. But in the 80th year of his rich and
venerable life, he looked quite strong, healthy and happy. "Oh,
I've been taking a break from writing, except for signing my pay
receipts," Pramoedya said jokingly, during the function held at
the lounge of the luxury Pakubuwono Residence in South Jakarta.
The birthday party, in large part arranged by Indonesian
author Eka Budianta, was attended by a wide range of people, from
university professor Apsanti Djokosujatno, entrepreneur Bob
Sadino in his usual short pants, veteran singer Titiek Puspa, to
television soap opera actress Cornelia Agatha.
After being the symbol of the oppressed for the duration of
the authoritarian New Order era, Pramoedya is still cast as a
literary icon.
Pram, as he is often called, born in Blora in Central Java on
Feb. 6, 1925, was jailed for 14 years without trial by Soeharto's
New Order regime due to his links to the literary wing of the
Indonesian Communist Party (PKI).
The years he spent in prisons, in particular the 10 years in a
prison camp on Buru Island in Central Maluku, were his most
productive years when he created his internationally acclaimed
quartet novels -- The Earth of Mankind, Child of All Nations,
Footsteps, and House of Glass. They were published
surreptitiously in the 1980s by Hasta Mitra, which was managed by
Pram's friend Joesoef Isaak.
During the New Order government, the four books became a
reference and a kind of "bible" for progressive students and
victims of injustice.
Pram, whose works have been translated into 20 languages, won
the 1995 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature, and
Creative Communication Arts. He rose to prominence after he was
nominated several times for the Nobel Prize for Literature.