Will I love This Earth of Mankind?

This is a book that keeps on changing my life. I was bowled over the first time I read it because it completely transformed my understanding of global history. The multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-national history I’d been piecing together studying Conrad’s work suddenly all made sense in a different way.

Pramoedya’s novel shows how Conrad’s novels are really all about the anti-colonial revolution. I love the book for the way it introduces all the most important historical, political, social, sexual, and philosophical questions bound up with decolonization.

It's a deceptively simple read, but cocooned within the sentimental coming-of-age story of its… show more.

Nothing like a travel book, either. This is the first volume of the epic Buru Quartet, first recited orally and then smuggled page by page out of the prison camp where dissident writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer was being held.

The hero, Minke, is so imbued with European colonial values that his life and love affairs are a journey into the native land he has never known—Indonesia at the time of its awakening toward independence. It's Victor Hugo meets gamelan bells and a great read.