Ananta Toer, Pramoedya

Pramoedya Ananta Toer , a writer and former political prisoner, was born in Blora, Central Java in 1925. He wrote short stories, novels, articles and polemical pieces in publications such as Bintang Timur. He was a member of Lekra, the People’s Cultural Institute, the cultural organisation linked to the Indonesian Communist Party, the PKI. He was imprisoned for nine months under Sukarno for his criticism of the government’s policy towards the ethnic Chinese. In the anti-communist repression in 1965, Pramoedya was targeted as a leading literary figure of the Indonesian left and was imprisoned and later exiled in Buru Island in the Moluccas for a total of thirteen years. Though released in 1979, he remained under house arrest until 1992. The Suharto regime banned all his writings, though his works were re-published following the fall of Suharto. He was nominated several times for the Nobel Prize for Literature. He died in Jakarta on 30 April, 2006.

Ensiklopedi Tokoh Indonesia, https://tokoh.id/tokoh/ensiklopedi/pramoedya-ananta-toer/