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Cover of This Earth of Mankind by Pramoedya Ananta Toer

This Earth of Mankind

Pramoedya Ananta Toer

  • 360 pages · about 6 hours
  • First published 1980
  • 18 editions
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1 About this book

Minke is a young Javanese of noble family and one of the very few natives at an elite Dutch school, in the Dutch East Indies at the close of the nineteenth century. A gifted writer, he admires European learning and is looked down on by classmates who all claim some European blood. A visit to a wealthy estate brings him into the household of Nyai Ontosoroh, the Javanese concubine of a Dutch man, a formidable self-taught woman, and he falls in love with her daughter, Annelies. The attachment draws him into conflict with colonial society and its laws. Pramoedya Ananta Toer first told the story aloud to fellow prisoners on the island of Buru; it was published in 1980 as the first of the four novels known as the Buru Quartet.

  • Earth sciences
  • Young men
  • Earth (planet)

2 What to expect

A novel of the Dutch East Indies around 1900, narrated by a gifted Javanese student at an elite colonial school who falls in love with the daughter of a Dutch man and his Javanese concubine. It is a coming-of-age story and a love story, and above all a study of how colonial law and racial hierarchy shape every relationship. The telling is direct and absorbing, with much talk about ideas, and it is the first of four linked novels.

Good for readers who want: Indonesian literature, colonial history from the inside, and a coming-of-age story.

3 About Pramoedya Ananta Toer

1925–2006

Pramoedya Ananta Toer (EYD: Pramudya Ananta Tur; 6 February 1925 – 30 April 2006), also nicknamed Pram, was an Indonesian novelist and writer. His works span the colonial period under Dutch rule, Indonesia's struggle for independence, its occupation by Japan during World War II, as well as the post-colonial authoritarian regimes of Sukarno and Suharto, and are infused with personal and national history.

Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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