SOURCE: Breslow, Stephen P. Review of Child of All Nations, by Pramoedya Ananta Toer. World Literature Today 69, no. 1 (winter 1995): 226.

In the following review, Breslow lauds the epic narrative scope of Child of All Nations and comments that Pramoedya's “life and work remind us just how far we have yet to go in the direction of social and economic justice.”

Pramoedya Ananta Toer's Buru tetralogy, the second installment of which is Child of All Nations, is properly labeled “Buru” on several accounts. It was composed, first orally as episodes told to other prisoners and later written down on Buru Island, where the author was held for “political crimes” without trial by the present Indonesian government from 1965 to 1979. In addition, the tetralogy chronicles in a classic form of historical fiction (with many references to real historical events and characters modeled closely on typical personae from the turn-of-the-century era) a long...