Indonesia had the bad luck to be too close to Vietnam and to try to work out its own destiny when that country began to defeat the United States. Over a million Indonesians were massacred by the Suharto regime. He survived the ideological cleansing and has left us with an immense and tragic testimony comparable to The House of the Dead by Dostoevsky. Humanism, dignity and the firmness of his convictions stand out in the memoirs of an author whose trajectory goes hand in hand with the force and quality of all of his works.
