All That Is Gone: Stories

by Pramoedya Ananta Toer

Overview

From one of the world's most acclaimed writers comes a collection of beautiful short stories based on the author's childhood.

Pramoedya Ananta Toer is a major figure in world literature, listed in John Major's rewrite of the famous Lifetime Reading Plan among the likes of James Baldwin, Bertolt Brecht, Graham Greene, and John Steinbeck as one of 100 authors everyone should read. A constant contender for the Nobel Prize, he recently won one of France's highest literary awards and has won the highest award in Asian letters.

In All That Is Gone, Pramoedya's semiautobiographical stories deal with life's major themes: birth and death, sexual knowledge and love, compassion and revenge. Some stories are written from a child's point of view, others from that of an adult. But all are written in a style that quickly wraps the reader up in this master storyteller's narrative web. This is the first time Pramoedya's short fiction has been widely available to the English reading public; its publication represents a significant addition to the canon of world literature in translation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781401366636
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	01/28/2004
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)
Age Range:	13 - 18 Years

About the Author

Pramoedya Ananta Toer is the author of more than thirty books, including The Fugitive, The Mute's Soliloquy, and The Girl from the Coast, and is published in more than thirty countries. He has been called "Indonesia's Albert Camus" (San Francisco Chronicle). The Los Angeles Times compared him to James Baldwin and Dashiell Hammett. And he is listed in the updated edition of the classic Lifetime Reading Plan among the likes of Bertolt Brecht, Graham Greene, and John Steinbeck as one of 100 authors everyone should read. He has been profiled in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and other major publications around the world. He is the recipient of numerous international literary awards (such as France's Chevalier award and the highest award in Asian letters, the Magsaysay award) and freedom-of-speech awards (such as the PEN Freedom-to-Write award and the Hellman-Hammett award). He lives outside Jakarta.

Table of Contents

	Preface	VII
	All that is Gone	I
	Inem	31
	In Twilight Born	49
	Circumcision	73
	Revenge	85
	Independence Day	115
	Acceptance	139
	The Rewards of Marriage	211
	Translator's Note	255

Editorial Reviews

In the last story of this collection from Indonesia’s preëminent writer, the author himself makes a short appearance, stricken with self-doubt and grieved by the evil events he recounts. But he reminds himself, “You must be willing to tell stories about the loss of hope.” A sense of duty is perhaps natural for a writer who spent nearly two decades as a political prisoner under three different regimes. But the striking achievement of these stories is an unshakable innocence of voice and a willingness to leave judgment to the reader. Pramoedya’s art is made more of sadness than of anger, and he is particularly adept at narrating from a child’s perspective—as when a six-year-old boy sees his best friend, a girl of eight, married off, beaten by her husband, and, after she flees, made a social outcast.

The New Yorker

If, you come to this writer's work for sociological reasons, I believe you'll stay, for the wonder of his art.

San Francisco Chronicle

A writer of wisdom, humanity, and great storytelling ability.

Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

Eight stories by celebrated Indonesian novelist Toer (The Girl From the Coast, 2002, etc.), most of them fictionalized memoirs of his childhood and youth. Born in 1925, the son of a nationalist schoolmaster in East Java, the author grew up in a home that was a center of the nascent anticolonialist movement. The characters here, very obviously modeled closely on his relatives and himself, are educated, provincial Indonesians who move somewhat awkwardly between, on the one hand, the traditions of Islam and village life and, on the other, the modern consciousness that underlay the development of Indonesian nationalism. The title story features a young boy's impressionistic recollections of his childhood home: his schoolmaster father participates in the nationalist movement and is often away for long periods of time; his long-suffering and devout Muslim mother suffers from her husband's neglect but endures nonetheless. "In Twilight Born" continues the saga, describing the turmoil that is wrought when a local teacher makes his home into a center of anticolonial activity and nearly has his school shut down by the authorities in consequence. "Circumcision" offers an unusually nostalgic view of Islam from the perspective of an 11-year-old boy who recalls his circumcision and the celebrations that followed. "Inem" counters with a sad account of a poor servant girl forced into an arranged marriage at the age of eight. Family life is Toer's dominant theme here, but he can turn his attention outward as well. "Revenge" depicts a young private in the nationalist forces who must look the other way when he witnesses one of his officers torturing a captured soldier, and "Independence Day" portrays thequiet shame of a blind and crippled hero of the war of independence who comes to resent being looked after by his wealthy family. A fine collection that manages to re-create a distant and exotic world, from a writer who deserves to be better known in this country.

Kirkus Reviews