This Earth of Mankind (Buru #1) in Read a book from each country

Oct 25, 2010 Harry Rutherford rated it really liked it

Shelves: asia, around-the-world, south-east-asia

This Earth of Mankind is the first novel of the Buru Quartet, so called because it was composed when Pramoedya Ananta Toer was a political prisoner on Buru Island in the 60s. I say ‘composed’ rather than ‘written’ because the first version of it was told orally to his fellow prisoners. He had apparently just about finished the research and planning when he was arrested and all his notes and books were destroyed.

Which is an immediately intriguing back-story, although the relationship between the This Earth of Mankind is the first novel of the Buru Quartet, so called because it was composed when Pramoedya Ananta Toer was a political prisoner on Buru Island in the 60s. I say ‘composed’ rather than ‘written’ because the first version of it was told orally to his fellow prisoners. He had apparently just about finished the research and planning when he was arrested and all his notes and books were destroyed.

Which is an immediately intriguing back-story, although the relationship between the novel and his imprisonment is not particularly direct, in that Pramoedya was imprisoned by Suharto’s military dictatorship as part of an anti-Communist purge, whereas the novel is set at the very end of the C19th — 1898, in fact — in a Java which is part of the Dutch East Indies.

Still, it is, among other things, a clearly political novel; it deals with the political awakening of a young man growing up in a society structured as a formal racial hierarchy, with ‘Natives’ at the bottom, ‘Pures’ (i.e. Europeans) at the top, and a layer of ‘Indos’ (Indo-European, mixed race) stuck in the middle, operating as a local elite.

The hero of the novel is a Native, but an unusually privileged one; because of the importance of his family, he is the only Native* at an elite high school for Europeans and Indos. So he’s awkwardly positioned in between worlds, brought up to believe that his European education makes him better than other Natives. But of course when he comes into conflict with the establishment, he discovers how fragile his privilege is, and how much he is dependent on the goodwill of the colonial powers.

I enjoyed it; it reminded me rather of one of those European novels from between the world wars, with a whiff of melodrama, and characters having long wordy conversations about ideas. Slightly old-fashioned, but in a good way. I’m certainly tempted to pick up the second in the quartet.

This Earth of Mankind is my book from Indonesia for the Read The World challenge.

* it feels very weird to keep capitalising ‘Native’ like that, but I’m following the practice of the novel, or the translation, which capitalises the racial terms to emphasise their formal legal status.
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Dec 02, 2011 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it really liked it

Shelves: read2015, own, around-the-world, location-indonesia, worldlit2015

This is a complex novel about Dutch-Indo relations through the eyes of Minke, an intelligent Javanese boy who is sent up through Dutch schooling. He falls in love with the daughter of a nyai (a concubine, or slave, as she would put it) whose father is Dutch but whose mother is native. He calls the nyai "Mama" through most of the novel. He is forced to confront his own preconceived notions on intelligence, hierarchy, and personal value, largely because of Mama:

"Stories about happy things are

This is a complex novel about Dutch-Indo relations through the eyes of Minke, an intelligent Javanese boy who is sent up through Dutch schooling. He falls in love with the daughter of a nyai (a concubine, or slave, as she would put it) whose father is Dutch but whose mother is native. He calls the nyai "Mama" through most of the novel. He is forced to confront his own preconceived notions on intelligence, hierarchy, and personal value, largely because of Mama:

"Stories about happy things are never interesting. They are not stories about people and their lives, but about heaven, and clearly do not take place on this earth of ours."

There are co-existing governments in Indonesia during this time period - Minke's father is a bupati, a regional nobleman post that is given honor and authority until it involves a non-native person, and then all bets are off. Minke could actually have moved up into a similar role (because of his blood) but seems to be positioning himself to have more of an influence in crossing the lines, something that is not a popular approach, but one gaining a lot of attention, referred to as "Association Theory," this idea of equal governance with the Europeans. It looks like Child of All Nations continues Minke's story as he takes on a larger role. Since this volume ends so tragically, I would be interested in knowing what happens next.

I have read a handful of books set in Indonesia (more than a handful if you include West Papua) but this is the only one translated from a native author. It actually is against the law to sell or purchase his work within Indonesia, and the quartet that this novel introduces were originally composed orally while the author was in jail for political reasons, recited to other inmates, until he was allowed to have paper. The author's life is reflected in the tensions of the novel - native vs. European, tradition vs. religion, etc.

"Science was giving birth to more and more miracles. The legends of my ancestors were being put to shame. No longer was it necessary to meditate in the mountains for years in order to be able to speak to somebody across the seas. The Germans had laid a cable reaching from England to India! And these cables were multiplying and spreading all over the face of the earth. The whole world could now observe the behavior of any person. And people could now observe the behavior of the whole world.

But mankind and its problems remained as they have always been. And no more so than in the matters of love."

Also discussed on Episode 044 of the Reading Envy Podcast. ...more

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May 08, 2011 Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship rated it liked it

Shelves: world-books-challenge, historical-fiction, read-in-translation, 3-stars, southeast-asia, indonesia

I read this book for my world fiction challenge, because it was getting embarrassing that I had nothing from Indonesia (the world’s fourth-most-populous country!). Unfortunately, there just aren’t a lot of choices available in English, so I wound up reading this even though it was largely lost in translation.

This Earth of Mankind is a politically important book--first told orally while the author was a political prisoner--with a political (anti-colonialist) message. Second, it’s the story, set a I read this book for my world fiction challenge, because it was getting embarrassing that I had nothing from Indonesia (the world’s fourth-most-populous country!). Unfortunately, there just aren’t a lot of choices available in English, so I wound up reading this even though it was largely lost in translation.

This Earth of Mankind is a politically important book--first told orally while the author was a political prisoner--with a political (anti-colonialist) message. Second, it’s the story, set at the end of the 19th century, of an 18-year-old Indonesian boy, nicknamed Minke by one of the teachers in the elite Dutch school he’s privileged to attend (the teacher apparently meant to call him a monkey, and now that’s replaced his actual identity, ooooh don’t you see the damage colonialism does here?). But it’s a very weird story. Minke meets a reclusive family with a beautiful daughter, and the two instantly become so enamored of each other that the mother invites him to come live at their house. Which he does, apparently finding this only a little weird. The daughter, whom we’re explicitly told is “no more than a fragile doll” with the emotional maturity of a 10-year-old, becomes deathly ill whenever Minke so much as goes on an extended family visit, but he doesn’t mind sticking around too much, since she’s super hot after all. (“A beautiful love story”? Really?) Anyway, no spoilers: the book is very slow and meandering for the first 250 pages or so, but does pick up toward the end.

Toer does a good job with the cultural and historical setting, which is educational, and the characters’ personalities are distinct enough. The novel makes its political statement effectively without becoming so didactic as to belong on my “op-ed books” shelf, although it’s close. It's certainly not subtle, but the injustices of a caste-based colonial system don't lend themselves to subtlety. The translation could have been more accessibly-written, though, and there’s a lot of repetition, as if the author was perhaps too wedded to the novel’s spoken form.

At any rate, I can see this novel being great for courses on comparative or post-colonial literature, and am sure its virtues are much more evident in Indonesian and to people who share that cultural background. But for non-Indonesian, non-academic readers looking for a good story, you can probably give this one a pass. ...more

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Apr 11, 2014 Julia rated it it was amazing

Brilliant!

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Mar 31, 2025 Douglas rated it it was ok

Shelves: own, fiction, indonesia

Desperta algum interesse pelo panorama da sociedade colonial holandesa em Java - mas se há algum mérito literário aqui ele foi destruído pela tradução. Os personagens são rasos como pires e a leitura se arrasta de forma interminável.

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