Indonesian Dissidence and Modern Narrative Form: Pramoedya Ananta Toer

Abstract

Pramoedya Ananta Toer's Buru quartet is recognized as one of the world's classic narratives of decolonization. Simultaneously drawing from and unraveling the conventions of the European novel, the epic scope of its narrative is premised on a dissidence of both political and aesthetic form. The linguistic, literary, and political dissidence of Pramoedya's modern narrative style may be traced from the early work of the late 1940s, forged from the revolutionary‐nationalist experience of Indonesia's founding, to the late work smuggled out of Buru Island, where Pramoedya was incarcerated after 1965 by Suharto's New Order regime. Just as the fragmentary form of Pramoedya's early narratives persists in the later historical novels, so the historical scope of the Buru novels is implicit in the style of the early work. Both are shaped by the imperative to decolonize modern narrative form.