Bernard Lane – Max Lane is multiplying. There was a young Australian diplomat by that name, posted to Jakarta in 1980. He was soon sent home for introducing the English-speaking world to a remarkable writer.
Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Indonesian author of the Buru Quartet, was a leftist and unacceptable to the archipelago's rulers, both the colonial Dutch and General Suharto.
It was undiplomatic of Lane to become his translator. But Pramoedya's epic of love, conflict and the birth of an island nation, is still in print and readers are grateful.
So much so that one has performed a very unusual act of homage. Safuan Johari, a composer of electronica in Singapore, makes music under the name Max Lane.
"I was quite blown away by the history of Pramoedya," Johari says. "He wrote [some of the quartet] by reciting it to his fellow prison inmates because he was banned from using any writing materials."
Johari likens the sombre tones of his music to the suffering and "dark history" of Pramoedya and his works.
His three-track album, The Mim Project, cuts up and recovers old recordings of Malay and Indonesian music as well as snatches from an interview with Pramoedya.
The necktie-like character Mim, from the old Jawi script of the Malay language, is a nod towards Johari's heritage. He is ethnic Malay and both his grandfathers were Javanese.
Although Malay and Indonesian are close, it was English, Johari's other language, that unlocked the words of Pramoedya for him.
Max Lane himself is not surprised by this. "English is becoming the actual first national language of Singapore but still, among all of the races, they sense that they are somehow Southeast Asian," he says.
He believes Singapore has "the single biggest concentration" of those who read the Buru Quartet in English. "They tend to pick up books that are set in Southeast Asia and are trying to say something serious about it."
Max the elder and Max the younger have been in touch thanks to another link in an intriguing cultural chain. Charanpal S. Bal, a Singaporean in Fremantle, heard The Mim Project, liked it, and gave it a spin on Unpopular Radio, a web radio station. Bal happens to be doing his PhD at Murdoch University's Asia Research Centre. Lane is a research associate there, as well as at the University of Sydney.
The club of Indonesianists is a small one. Soon enough, he was being teased by a fellow member: "Have you become a DJ now?"
Safuan Johari performs next at Home Club, Singapore, on February 6. Max Lane's next outing is at Gleebooks in Sydney for the February 18 launch of his new book, Unfinished Nation: Indonesia Before and after Suharto.
Visit Max Lane's blog at http://maxlane2009.wordpress.com