Indonesia's most celebrated literary figure Pramoedya Ananta Toer, now suffering declining health, is pessimistic about Indonesia's future due to the country's "lack of good leaders".
"After [founding president] Sukarno there have only been clowns who had no capability to lead a country," he was quoted as saying Monday by state news agency Antara.
Pramoedya, who turned 79 on February 6, has often been a nominee for the Nobel Literature Prize for his 34 works of fiction and non-fiction. Critics have hailed him as Indonesia's most courageous, important and talented writer, but he has long been shunned by Indonesian society.
The son of a schoolteacher, Pramoedya was born in 1925 in Blora, Central Java. He was jailed by the Dutch and later by ex-presidents Sukarno and Suharto for his often controversial writings.
He was first arrested in 1947 by the Dutch for producing an Indonesian-language magazine. During a spell of more than two years in a Dutch prison camp, he wrote his first published novel Perburuan (The Fugitive), describing the experiences of an anti-Japanese rebel.
Pramoedya was next arrested in 1961 and held without trial for nearly a year in Jakarta's Cipinang jail for criticizing the Sukarno regime's anti-Chinese policies. He has blamed the Army, not Sukarno, for his arrest and says he was treated with respect and allowed to meet with his family.
In 1965, Pramoedya was detained without trial by the emerging Suharto regime for his affiliation to the Indonesian Communist Party's cultural wing LEKRA. He was imprisoned for the next 14 years, mostly on the remote island prison of Buru. All of his books were banned by the Suharto regime.
Following his release from Buru in 1979, he was confined to Jakarta and forced to report to authorities every month until Suharto resigned in May 1998.
His best known work is the so-called Buru Quartet, which comprises four novels – This Earth of Mankind, Child of All Nations, Footsteps and House of Glass – all regarded as modern classics. The books, which were inspired by Indonesia's anti-colonial struggle against the Dutch, have been translated into more than 25 languages.
Pramoedya's riveting autobiography The Mute's Soliloquy, published in 1995 and translated into English in 1999, has also received rave reviews.
Although the ban on his books remains in place, they are now widely available.
Pramoedya's poor health is hardly surprising, given the brutal treatment he received at the hands of the military. He has also been a heavy smoker of kretek (clove-flavored) cigarettes since his youth.
In the forward to Kretek: The Culture and Heritage of Indonesia's Clove Cigarettes, Pramoedya writes that hunger compelled him to sell and smoke kreteks as a child. "Smoking was a good way to fend off hunger pains," he writes.
Since the fall of Suharto, Pramoedya has been extremely critical of Indonesia's political elite. He says Suharto's regime continues "to silently hold power" because politicians lack the courage to bring the ousted dictator to trial and implement genuine reforms.
"Suharto has ordered the killing of hundreds of thousands of people but he is still at large," he told a Dutch radio station last year.
Pramoedya is also a harsh critic of President Megawati Sukarnoputri, describing her as "ignorant" and full of "empty words".
"I was raised and educated about an Indonesia that would someday be democratic and modern and independent," he told the Los Angeles Times in late 2001. "But let alone modern, it's becoming more primitive. Every problem is solved by gunshots. Democracy is not working yet."
Last year, he said Indonesia had failed to make any progress since the fall of Suharto. "There is no progress at all. Indonesia is the marketplace of the world; we're rich in raw materials. The only thing the people have to show for it is unemployment."