Picked up a good book to read , The Mute's Soliloquy, after my good friend, Rev. Anthony Loke blogged about Pramoedya's other work Arok of Java .
I had read Pramoedya's earlier work Keluarga Gerilya (published in 1950) back when I was in Form Six for my Malay literature paper . I enjoyed it though it was in Malay. The other was Sandera by Arena Wati.
The Mute's Soliloquy" is a loose autobiography woven together from letters and essays Pramoedya wrote secretly on Buru; he never expected them to survive, but a Catholic priest smuggled them out. The book is an extraordinary mixture of advice to his children, wrenching self-examination and testimony of his time on Buru, a place of shifting, petty rules, grinding labor and indifference to life. "I saw my friends killed by soldiers just for fun," Pramoedya told.
Well, this would be my bedtime reading for the next few weeks.
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