SOURCE: Anderson, Benedict R. Review of The Fugitive, by Pramoedya Ananta Toer. World Literature Today 65, no. 2 (spring 1991): 367.

In the following review, Anderson commends Pramoedya's use of satirical humor in The Fugitive to address contemporary issues of government corruption and militarism.

Although Pramoedya Ananta Toer is the only Southeast Asian writer of sufficient stature to be nominated seriously for a Nobel Prize, he was imprisoned without trial for twelve years by the military-controlled government of Indonesia, and his works remain banned in that country. The American publication, in a fine new translation, of Perburuan, one of his best-known texts, is thus especially welcome.

The novel was composed in 1949, while the twenty-three-year-old author was in a Dutch colonial prison for active participation in his country's armed struggle for independence. The story is set four years earlier, however, in the last days of the brutal Japanese military occupation. Hardo, the young...