House of Glass

This is my favourite novel in this excellent quartet. Pangemanann is a native policeman, working for the Dutch colonial government. He has the job of monitoring Indonesian nationalist Minke’s activities.

At the end of the third book, Minke gets banished to Ambon in the Maluku Archipelago and exits the scene and so Pangemanann takes over from him as narrator for the fourth book, 'House of Glass'. Pangemanann gets promoted to be a colonial official in charge of studying and controlling the subversive movements that Minke led and still inspires. Pangemanann, an educated, intelligent man, struggles with his task. He secretly admires Minke and feels sympathy for the cause of his fellow Indonesians (although this term did not yet exist). show more However, he justifies his mission to destroy Minke’s work: he wants to get his pension and to continue to provide for his French wife and Indo children.

Pangemanann's internal conflicts pull him apart, he turns to drink and his wife leaves him. He falls into the arms of a prostitute, becomes ill, but still continues with his duties. Why? Maybe he’s a workaholic, or he knows it can be no other way. I prayed for the author to let him come to a moral decision, to give up his work before it was too late - but I knew it wasn’t going to be.

I found Pangemanann to be a more interesting narrator than the heroic Minke who (in the earlier novels) marries a beautiful half Dutch, half Javanese woman who dies, then marries a beautiful Chinese revolutionary, who also dies. Both of these deaths he manages to get over. Then Minke gets engaged to a French Indo girl of seventeen. Things don't work out, but no matter, he moves on to marry a beautiful princess from Maluku. The guy attracts every beautiful woman who graces the pages of the tetralogy! Rejection doesn’t come into it. Who can sympathize with such a character?

I really thought Pramoedya's writing detailing the mental anguish of (the evil) Pangemanann brilliant. I imagine it is rare that in a quartet of novels the last one is the best? I haven't got through many. Yukio Mishima's 'Sea of Tranquillity' comes to mind as a much-vaunted quartet - but I didn't get past book two. I'm so glad a pushed through to the end of the 'Buru Quartet'. show less

House of Glass (Rumah Kaca) is the last of Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s Buru Quartet, the series of four novels tracing Indonesia's 'awakening' that Toer wrote while in prison on the island of Buru. (See my review of Book 2 for the background to this). The quartet is an early example of historical fiction as activism, that is, it was written by an author redressing the hidden stories and silences of colonised peoples in well-researched fiction.

House of Glass is the next phase of Toer's novelised life of Tirto Adi Suryo, pioneer of Indonesia's national awakening and of Indonesian journalism. In Books 1-3 Minke is both the symbol of nationalism and the challenge to Dutch colonialism which emerged in the early 20th century but did not come to show more fruition until after World War Two. Toer shows how educating the cleverest of the Native Indonesians led to the development of European ideas about freedom and equality, the irony being that those same Europeans did not bestow freedom and equality on the people they colonised. Indeed, to forbid things is a colonial hobby that gives a pleasure of its own. It makes you feel more important and more powerful. It becomes the norm within six months in the colony, away from European democratic ideas.

By the end of Book 3, Minke has launched journalism that brought him to the attention of the Dutch authorities and now in Book 4, he is in exile.

So, with the hero of the first three novels offstage, House of Glass puts aside his story which is instead narrated through the reflections of the Native* Indonesian policeman Pangemanann, whose job it was to monitor and suppress the emerging independence movement. The 'house of glass' of the title refers to Pangemanann's surveillance of the key activists who follow in Minke's footsteps. Pangemanann is a conflicted soul: educated in France, he has risen to high office and enjoys the status he has acquired, but he admires Minke and his ambitions for an independent Indonesia. Nevertheless, to maintain his own position, he must corrupt his personal values and work with the Dutch authorities to sabotage the movement. He delegates authority to beat up opposition figures; he spreads divisive rumours; he incites race riots; he tortures detainees; and — while he doesn't get his own hands dirty — he is involved in murder too.

While the point of this is to show that the independence movement withered for decades because it was sabotaged from within by the very Native Indonesians that Tirto Adi Suryo was keen to unite, this doesn't make for a very engaging novel. Truth be told, I made heavy weather of it and resorted to reading a chapter a day to get it finished. I didn't abandon it despite the temptation because it was Book 4 of a significant quartet and I wanted to complete it.

Pangemanann enjoys dissecting the divisions within society which fracture the independence movement.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/05/29/house-of-glass-the-buru-quartet-4-by-pramoed... show less

SPOILERS FOLLOW!!! House of Glass is frustrating because our beloved narrator and protagonist, Minke, is replaced by the police officer charged with destroying Minke. It's a bold narrative choice, allowing us to view the most recent events from another perspective. More brilliant was making the three previous books part of the plot of the final book.

Well... with this book I've now completed the Buru Quartet. That was one of my goals for this year. Now I'm wandering aimlessly through my library picking things up at random.

Book four, House of Glass, was different from the first three. The point of view switched from Minke, the main protagonist to a Indies Government official, Meneer Pangemanann, spelled with two 'n's. His was a tormented soul with a unlikeable narrative voice.

The quartet ended with what read like a history textbook lesson. I was a bit disappointed. I wanted more spirit, more inner dialog from Minke... But remaining true to the first 3 volumes... there was no happy ending.

'We all have to accept reality, yes, that's true. But just to accept reality and do nothing else, show more that is the attitude of human beings who have lost the ability to develop and grow, because human beings also have the ability to create new realities. And if there are no longer people who want to create new realities, then perhaps the word progress should be removed altogether from humankind's vocabulary.'

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From an author's writing, I would construct how he felt and thought, what his desires were, weaknesses, what were his particular skills and capabilities, how broad was his general knowledge, and everything was linked together, as if by clear crystal threads. Every piece of writing was a world unto itself, floating halfway between reality and a dream world. show less

A brilliant final novel to the Buru Quartet, where we learn the tragic outcome of the hero Minke and the fate that can befall a hero, and the significance of personal sacrifice to political development.

Indonesian novelist and political dissident Toer's compelling tale of love and colonialism is narrated by a young native student in turn-of-the-century Java who becomes involved in the intrigues of one of the island's leading families.