Kadek Krishna Adidharma, Ubud – Despite the lateness of the hour for the sleepy artisan town of Ubud, a star-studded cast began to gather at 8:30 p.m. at the open stage of Puri Saraswati on Friday night for Tribute to Pramoedya.

Malaysia editor and writer Dina Zaman was one of the first to take her seat and enjoy the ambiance of gurgling water and an amphibian orchestra croaking and chirping from among the lotus fronds surrounding the stage.

The audience continued to trickle, filling all the provided seats, and began to rest and sit cross-legged on the stage itself, the access pathway through the lotus ponds and even the seats of Cafe Lotus, across the pond.

It was an appreciative crowd of hundreds that listened when travel writer and novelist Jamie James, who first came to Indonesia 11 years ago to interview Pramoedya, began the tribute.

"Tonight, we gather to praise and ponder Pramoedya Ananta Toer, by common consensus the finest writer of fiction yet to come out of the Republic of Indonesia," James opened.

John McGlynn, publications director of Lontar Foundation, then presented an introduction to the life and career of Pram, as the late writer is known to his friends.

"Pramoedya Ananta Toer is no longer with us," senior journalist and essayist Goenawan Mohamad opened his keynote address, "but such is his stature that his absence constitutes an assignment. Today, we have to deal with the memory of a hero and piles of prose works, not knowing for sure whether the subject of our discourse should be the former or the latter."

"Pramoedya is a writer who believes that good things can be done with words," he concluded. "At the end, history may have failed him. But history always fails everybody. The wonderful thing about Pramoedya's works is that they never celebrate defeat. Deep inside them, the sun always rises."

A brief anthology of Pram's work was presented by Pam Allen, professor of Indonesian language and literature at the University of Tasmania, and a selection was read by Indonesian literary giants Sapardi Djoko Damono, Linda Christanty and Sitok Srengenge.

The evening's tribute put a spotlight on the deep humanism evident in Pram's work.

Raising the laughable fact that the ban on Pramoedya's books are still yet to be lifted, his publisher and editor Joesoef Isak of Hasta Mitra quoted Maxim Gorky: "The people must know their history!"

Said Joesoef, closing the tribute: "Without rakyat, the people, knowing their own history, they cannot advance the historical process they are carrying out – the Indonesian revolution: the creation and consolidation of an Indonesian nation where the people are sovereign, independent, not an alienated and cosmopolitan elite."

The tribute ran until almost midnight, and those who were not aware of Pram and his works had a comprehensive introduction to the multiple Nobel nominee of the Buru Quartet – a set of four volumes of fiction recognized as the preeminent literary work of modern Indonesia.

The evening was a fitting tribute to the late individualist, the master of Indonesian historical prose.