The Buru Quartet
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Pramoedya Ananta Toer (1925-2006)
The sequence of novels comprising This Earth of Mankind, Child of All Nations, Footsteps and House of Glass were composed orally while Pramoedya was imprisoned on the Indonesian island Buru,  in the Malay Archipelago, where the Suharto regime held thousands of political prisoners.  Denied writing materials, Pramoedya told these stories to his fellow prisoners; only later were they written down, smuggled out and eventually published — and banned by the Indonesian government. They reveal much about the human reality of colonial oppression, and Pramoedya’s life speaks volumes about the nature of authoritarian regimes.