From one of the world's most acclaimed writers comes a collection of beautiful short stories based on the author's childhood.
Pramoedya Ananta Toer is a major figure in world literature, listed in John Major's rewrite of the famous Lifetime Reading Plan among the likes of James Baldwin, Bertolt Brecht, Graham Greene, and John Steinbeck as one of 100 authors everyone should read. A constant contender for the Nobel Prize, he recently won one of France's highest literary awards and has won the highest award in Asian letters.
In All That Is Gone, Pramoedya's semiautobiographical stories deal with life's major themes: birth and death, sexual knowledge and love, compassion and revenge. Some stories are written from a child's point of view, others from that of an adult. But all are written in a style that quickly wraps the reader up in this master storyteller's narrative web. This is the first time Pramoedya's short fiction has been widely available to the English reading public; its publication represents a significant addition to the canon of world literature in translation.

From the author of the Buru Quartet and one of the greatest writers of our time comes a remarkable memoir of imprisonment and survival.
In 1965, Pramoedya Ananta Toer was detained by Indonesian authorities and eventually exiled to the penal island of Buru. Without a formal accusation or trial, the onetime national hero was imprisoned on Buru for eleven years. He survived under brutal conditions, somehow managing to produce his masterwork, the four novels of the Buru Quartet, as well as the remarkable journal entries, essays, and letters that comprise this moving memoir.
Reminiscent of the work of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Mute's Soliloquy is a harrowing portrait of a penal colony and a heartbreaking remembrance of life before it. With a resonance far beyond its particular time and place, it is Pramoedya's crowning achievement--a passionate tribute to the freedom of the mind and a celebration of the human spirit.
"A haunting record of a great writer's attempt to keep his imagination and his humanity alive."-- The New York Times Book Review
"A story too vast and serious to ignore."-- San Francisco Chronicle (front page review)

Struggling to assert the voice of his people, Minke is met with corruption tragedy. "A complex and colorful batik of political, intellectual, and social life in the Dutch East Indies at the turn of the 20th century."—The New York Times Book Review.

Minke, a young Javanese student, struggles to discover where his allegiances lie in colonial Indonesia. "A powerful love story and a tale of a young man's growing maturity in a land corrupted by political repression."—The Washington Post Book World.

Fascinating... endlessly sad.-Noam Chomsky In these remarkable interviews with Andr Vltchek and Rossie Indira, edited by Nagesh Rao, Indonesia's most celebrated writer speaks out against tyranny and injustice in a young and troubled nation. Toer here discusses personal and political topics he could never before address in public. Toer is best known for his novels comprising the Buru Quartet, The New York Times described his autobiography as a haunting record of a great writer's attempt to keep his imagination and his humanity alive under terrible conditions. Toer is widely considered a strong candidate for the Nobel prize in Literature.

The quartet concludes with the story of Pangemann, the colonial police inspector assigned to monitor Minke, who was trained in the West but still harbors nationalistic sympathies.

"Centuries ago, there was, in the eastern part of the island of Java, a kingdom by the name of Daha..." So begins The King, the Witch and the Priest, a fable with contemporary allure that is based on the story of Calon Arang, a Javanese legend dating from the twelfth century. As tradition tells it, Calon Arang was a powerful witch from the village of Girah who had a beautiful daughter named Ratna Manggali who could find no husband. No man would have her for fear of her mother. Calon Arang became so angered by her daughter's plight that she spread pestilence throughout the kingdom. To deal with the problem, King Erlangga ordered his most respected priest, Empu Baradah, to get rid of Calon Arang. This proved to be no easy task as Calon Arang owned a book containing all the secrets of sorcery. This ancient tale, as retold by Pramoedya Ananta Toer, exhibits a remarkable relevance to contemporary life with timeless lessons such as the triumph of good over evil and the ever-possible eternal salvation of one's soul. Pramoedya Ananta Toer (1925-2006) is Indonesia's most celebrated writer, with over thirty works of fiction translated into over thirty languages. A recipient of many major international awards, he was most recently awarded the Grand Prize in the 2000 Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize competition, Japan's highest literary honor. Willem Samuels is a long-time resident of Jakarta and has translated several of Pramoedya's works including The Fugitive, The Mute's Soliloquy, The Girl From the Coast and All That is Gone.

Now available for the first time in English, a classic from "a novelist who should get in line for the Nobel Prize" ("Los Angeles Times")
Pramoedya Ananta Toer is Indonesia's most celebrated writer, with over thirty works of fiction translated into over thirty languages, and the recipient of many major international awards, including the grand prize in the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize competition, Japan's highest literary honor. Narrated in the first person in Pramoedya's signature style, "It's Not an All Night Fair" tells the deeply affecting story of a son returning home to central Java to confront the fact of his father's death. Struggling to understand his reticent father, the son embarks on a personal quest to find value and meaning not only in his father's life but also in his own.

Now available in paperback, from the world-renowned author of The Mute's Soliloquy and The Buru Quartet comes a heartbreaking novel about innocence and power Pramoedya's The Girl from the Coast tells the story of a beautiful young woman from a fishing village who finds herself in an arranged marriage with a wealthy aristocrat. Forced to leave her parents and home behind, she moves to the city to become the "lady" of her husband's house. Pramoedya's breathtaking literary skill is evident in every word of this book, one of his classic works of fiction made especially poignant because it is based on the life of his own grandmother.

Minke embarks on a personal odyssey of self-discovery that takes him into the heady dawn of a fledgling nation. "Here is an author half a world away from us whose art and humanity are both so great that we instantly feel we've known him—and he us—all our lives."—USA Today.

A translation of short stories by the well-known Indonesian author, Pramoedya Ananta Toer. Written in the 1950s, these stories are intensely regional in flavor and modern in approach. This collection includes such works as "Stranded Fish," "Creatures Behind Houses," and the great "Ketjapi."