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The New Yorker The Quartet's final volume ... [is] one of the most ambitious undertakings in postwar world literature--from beginning to end.
The New York Times Book Review
Pramoedya Ananta Toer has achieved an illuminating, moving account of colonial psychosis.... House of Glass is also a memorable analysis of the human capacity for self-destruction, anywhere at any time.
The New York Times Book Review
The $50,000 Ramon Magsaysay Award, presented by the Government of the Philippines last year to the Indonesian writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer, cited the contribution his writings had made to ''the historical awakening and modern experience of the Indonesian people.'' Nowhere has that awakening been more fully documented than in his Buru tetralogy. Following ''This Earth of Mankind,'' ''Child of All Nations'' and ''Footsteps'' (all available as Penguin paperbacks), the final volume has now appeared in English, ably translated, like the others, by the Australian diplomat Max Lane. The title refers to the need for transparency in the life of the Dutch-ruled police state that is turn-of-the-century Indonesia, as described by Jacques Pangemanann, the police commissioner who narrates the novel: ''That is my assignment -- to watch every movement that takes place in that house of glass. . . . The Indies must not change. It must be maintained as it is forever. So if I am able to preserve this writing of mine and it comes into your hands, I would like you to give these notes of mine the title 'House of Glass.' '' That last sentence has its own ironic poignancy. Pramoedya (as he is known in Indonesia, since Javanese do not often use family names) was arrested by the Indonesian Government in 1965. Detained for 14 years in a work camp for political prisoners on Buru Island, where he was denied writing materials, he composed his fiction orally and had fellow prisoners learn it by heart. Had he wished to be topical and controversial, he could have composed a cautionary tale about repression in his own times. But in the Buru tetralogy he focuses on that extraordinary period of transition almost a century ago when the demise of colonialism was becoming apparent with the rise of indigenous nationalist movements. The hero of the Buru cycle is Minke, a Javanese whose story was inspired by that of a real-life political activist and journalist. However, in ''House of Glass'' it is Minke's opponent, Pangemanann (not so much a policeman as a forerunner of the Soviet-style state security commissioner), who commands our attention. At the opening of the book, Pangemanann is given the task of overseeing Minke's banishment to a remote island where he can do no harm; five years later, at the end of the book, he must meet Minke on his return from exile and eliminate any political threat he may still represent. Dispossessed, his friends and allies scattered, Minke dies soon thereafter, a spent force. Maneuvered into the background by the plot, he is not the book's true subject -- nor is it really the historical awakening of Indonesia. Rather, the author's chief concern here is with the corrupting influence of colonialism, represented by Pangemanann. Never is this troubled narrator -- or the reader -- allowed to forget that despite his formal education and intelligence, despite his elevation to the General Secretariat of the Governor General of the Dutch Indies (one of the most powerful positions in the colony), he still has the dark skin of ''a Native,'' a stain that will always show through. From the beginning, Pangemanann is uncomfortable when he must suppress people like Minke. Perfectly adapted to (a century later, one might say brainwashed by) the colonial ideology he has been taught to serve, Pangemanann is no less warped by it than any of the novel's white characters. Eventually as cynically self-serving as any Dutch mijnheer, he suffers nonetheless as the halves of his divided soul compete for mastery. In this story of one man's corruption, of how he succumbs to the lures of power and privilege at the cost of betraying his people and, in the end, himself, Pramoedya Ananta Toer has achieved an illuminating, moving account of colonial psychosis. But ''House of Glass'' is also a memorable analysis of the human capacity for self-destruction, anywhere and at any time.
Library Journal
Police Commissioner Pangemanann embodies all the conflicts of an East Indies native working for the Dutch colonial government at the dawn of the 20th century. Though drawn to support his people's emerging nationalism, he is duty-bound by his European superiors to thwart it by any means, either legal or illegal. Thus, he becomes an expert in the growing nationalist movement spawned by charismatic writer Minke, and, while filled with admiration for his target, he plots to destroy Minke and his followers through a campaign of arrests, exile, and violence. Success wins promotion and greater power, but the price is great as well, for hypocrisy and corruption eat at Pangemanann's soul, destroying his marriage, his career, and, ultimately, his sanity. This final novel in Toer's "Buru" tetralogy completes his examination of the conflict between colonialism and nationalism begun in This Earth of Mankind (LJ 9/1/91). However, with Minke in exile and Pangemanann as its narrator, House of Glass founders in cultural polemics and misses the vivid description and characterizations that marked the earlier works. Recommended for larger and special collections.
The New York Times Book Review
The title refers to the need for transparency in the life of the Dutch-ruled police state that is turn-of-the-century Indonesia. . . . The author's chief concern here is with the corrupting influence of colonialism, represented by Pangemanann. . . . In this story of one man's corruption, of how he succumbs to the lures of power and privilege at the cost of betraying his people and, in the end, himself, Pramoedya Ananta Toer has achieved an illuminating, moving account of colonial psychosis. But 'House of Glass' is also a memorable analysis of the human capacity for self-destruction, anywhere and at any time.
Publisher's Weekly
Police commissioner Tuan Pangemanann, narrator of this concluding volume to Pramoedya's extraordinary tetralogy set in colonial Indonesia, is a Sorbonne-educated reactionary, a consummate hypocrite, a cultivated monster, a sadist with pangs of conscience. Recognizing the rottenness of the colonial administration, he greatly admires Minke, crusading newspaper editor and nationalist fighter against Dutch imperialism, considering him a man of principle. Yet, as an obedient tool of the Netherlands Indies' ruling elite in the period from 1912 through the end of WWI, Pangemanann feels duty-bound to crush Minke and the native movement he represents, whether by arrest, torture or counterinsurgency terrorism. The first three volumes of Pramoedya's quartet (This Earth of Mankind; Child of All Nations; Footsteps)-written during the author's 14-year banishment, 1965-1979, to the prison island of Buru-were narrated by Minke, a progressive witness of world events. Here, by filtering the anti-colonialist struggle through Pangemanann's ambivalent, warped perspective, Pramoedya spikes his epic saga with slyly modernist irony, creating a work that is as subversive today as when it was written. (May) FYI: Pramoedya is currently under city arrest in Jakarta: all his books remain banned in Indonesia. Penguin will reissue the first three volumes of the Buru quartet in paperback to coincide with the publication of House of Glass.
The New York Times Book Review
...[A] sprawling literary [mansion]....[It displays] the mysteries of a foreign culture while magically containing rooms that seem designed with you in mind....This is not a book from which to gain a clear picture of modern Indonesian history or of Pramaoedya's place in it....a haunting record of a great writer's attempt to keep his imagination and his humanity alive under terrible conditions. USA Today Here is an author half a world away from us whose art and humanity are both so great that we instantly feel we've known him -- and he us -- all our lives.
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