[Saya Terbakar Amarah Sendirian! (I'm Enraged Alone!) Pramoedya Ananta Toer talks to Andre Vltchek & Rossie Indira. By Andre Vltchek & Rossie Indira Edited by: Chandra Gautama & Linda Chistanty. Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia (KPG) January 2006 xxix + 130 pp.]

Tasyriq Hifzhillah, Yogyakarta – Indonesia's most-famous living novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer and his works are an inexhaustible source of discussion. Pram, the abbreviated name by which he is usually referred to, is himself like a thick book, containing all sorts of stories. A major icon in Indonesia's literary arena, each of his works always shows some relationship between history and fiction.

Pram, of course, has lived history, and it has been hard on him. A former member of the Indonesian Communist Party, he was jailed for years during Soeharto's crackdown on communism, while hundreds of his friends and former comrades were murdered in the bloodletting that followed the aborted 1965 coup.

However, since he was freed from prison, the 81 year-old from Blora, Central Java, has earned dozens of citations for his work, including the Pablo Neruda Award, the Wertheim Award and the Ramon Magsasay Award. Since 1981, Pram's name has always been included on the list of nominees for the Nobel Prize for Literature.

But despite being a much-admired and internationally feted writer, Pram has more than a few bitter memories left of his former oppressors and the nation they have left him.

As an unreconstructed communist, who still believes in the power of Marxism to transform, Pram's civil rights continue to be curtailed here years after his books were banned during the Soeharto era.

And the old wounds are healing slowly. Despite his successes in life, it is perhaps not surprising to learn that Pram still describes himself as "being alienated in his own land." Pram's personal literary history is a touching legend. Not infrequently have the words he penned caused guns to be directed at him; his social exile made formal by his imprisonment on Buru Island. But Pram has refused to bow down to these forms of repression. Instead, he has steeled himself and let these experiences enrich his creativity.

Even at his advanced age, Pram is still producing work and the book's researchers, Andre Vltchek and Rossie Indira, have done their best to represent the voice of this great Indonesian writer and his lingering fury. What makes this book interesting is that Pram's rage is not just a personal response to hardship, it is anger about the decay of Indonesia as a nation.

In Saya Terbakar Amarah Sendirian!, Pram calls a spade a spade. In his unique way, Pram, as a principled man imbued with humanity, expresses his response to the historical, political and inhuman oppression that he has personally gone through.

Pram's statements in this book begin and end with a comment that he still burns with fury when thinking about Indonesia, which he says "has set fire to itself". His pent-up rage finds a channel in a discussion of Indonesian society, which he sees as being dominated by consumerism and rampant graft, a collapsing culture whose people, he says, have a form of historical amnesia.

The way Pram voices his ideas urgently and plainly lends great significance to the interviews in this book, which were held between December 2003 and March 2004. One finds not only the angry Pram but also new information about his lot, his attitude to life and his dreams.

It is Pram's desire that there will come a day when Indonesia becomes a unitary state free from all forms of intervention and colonialism. This notion of independent nationalism in opposition to colonialism is central to his ideas. However, in another part of the book, Pram says he would prefer to be ruled by the colonial governments of old rather than his own people if his countrymen grossly abused the powers they were given.

There is a great consistency in Pram's criticism, starting from his highly personal statements – about his relationship with his family for example, to his statements about language, politics and history – aspects that occupy important places in his body of work.

In one section, Pram complains about his children and grandchildren being no longer fond of reading. He expresses wonder at why they are different from him, a bookworm: "My children and grandchildren do not want to read newspapers. It has never occurred to me how they can be like this. They no longer have a reading habit. They prefer watching the television and do not wish to acquire more knowledge." Pram's complaint is not simply one of a disgruntled grandfather who hates to see his grandchildren glued to trashy TV. It is also the response of a man who continues to see the state doing little to improve the education of its people, one of its biggest resources.

However, one of the biggest targets of Pram's spleen is at the center of Indonesian public life, Javanese culture, which he says leans towards fascism. "Javanism" according to the writer, is a culture of subjugation and blind obedience to one's superior.

Pram notes the levels in the Javanese language signify different social classes. Because of the existing linguistic hierarchies, the Dutch and the Japanese could easily control Java, he says.

And Pram sees little difference between the lot of present-day Indonesians and those working in forced labor camps during the Japanese occupation. What is different, he says, is only the labeling, which is now more refined. Many Indonesians are still forced to eke out a living locally, for foreign companies, or as low-skilled migrant workers overseas, he argues. All this, he says, is evidence that governments here have little concern for the welfare of their citizens.

And for Pram the outlook looks bleak. For him, Indonesia is still in a process of decay, which will continue until the oppressive system here is done away with. Justice and prosperity will remain empty words uttered by high-ranking state officials, until a war is declared against the forces of colonialism, imperialism and capitalism, he says. If nothing changes, hope will continue to remain hope.

At the peak of his argument, Pram becomes his most provocative. There is now no time for compromise, he says. The only solution is revolution. An all-out revolution of power.

Not all will agree with his solution. Of course the attitudes in this book run parallel to the themes expressed in Pram's body of work – the importance of the need to disobey, refuse, challenge and guard one's freedom to think.

The winding road that Pram has traversed in his life can also be a valuable lesson learned. That is why this book is a must-read for anyone who wishes to have a good grasp of the root causes of the problems Indonesia is facing today.

From the burning fires of his anger, Pram has welded a coherent argument for his alienation and the necessity for change in a nation in need of creative solutions.

[The reviewer is a researcher at the Yogyakarta Institute for Liberation Studies.]