The last book I've read is "Meet is my vegetable" by Heinz Strunk in German language. It's a tragicomic story about a musician who always wanted to become a famous music producer. But he just became a big looser and has to work as a music teacher in a music school and he has to play dance music in a small dance band on village fairs. This book is hilarious and I can really recommend it. The last books I've read in English were "The Buru Quartet" by the Indonesian author Pramoedya Ananta Toer. He was imprisoned first by the Dutch from 1947 to 1949 for his role in the Indonesian revolution, then by the Indonesian government as a political prisoner. Many of his works have been written while in prison, including the Buru Quartet which was conceived in stories the author told to other prisoners during his confinement on Buru Island from 1969 to 1979. "The Buru Quartet" contains for books titled "This Earth of Mankind", "Child of All Nations", "Footsteps", and "House of Glass". The protagonist is Minke, a young Javanese student of great intelligence, sensivity, and ambition. Living equally among the colonists and colonized of late nineteenth-century java, he battles against the confines of colonial stricures. The son of a noble Janavese, he moves easily among the Dutch and their ideas and language but is prevented from enjoying their rights. He also falls deperately in love with the beautiful Indo-European Annelies, and it is through her and her extraordinary family that Minke finds the strength to embrace his world – the world of Indonesia – and all its beauty and possibility, brutality and anger. I was so moved and impressed by Minke's story that I read all four books immediatly in succession. The author is a real luminary in telling about Indonesia's diverse culture and society, political struggle and humanity so that I am very, very sad that he never got the Nobel Prize for Literature he was discussed as nominate for because he died in April 2006.
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