The Cornell University Southeast Asia Program will host the visit of Indonesia's most accomplished prose writer, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, to Central New York, April 15-20.

The author will present a reading from his recently published memoir, The Mute's Soliloquy (Hyperion Press) on Monday, April 19, at 4:30 p.m. in Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall, on the Cornell campus. Pramoedya will read in Indonesian with an English translation to follow. A public reception and book signing, coordinated by Cornell Campus Store, are scheduled to take place immediately following the reading at 5:15 p.m. at the Andrew Dickson White House. These events are free and open to the public. However, tickets will be distributed at the reading for those who wish to have a book signed by the author. Tickets will be available on a first-come, first-served basis.

Another book signing, hosted by The Bookery in the Bookery II, located in the DeWitt Mall in downtown Ithaca, will be held Saturday, April 17, from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Copies of the author's books will be available for purchase at both signings.

This is Pramoedya's first visit to the United States and will include travel to New York City, Washington, D.C., Ann Arbor, Mich., Madison, Wisc., Los Angeles and San Francisco. He also will visit the Canadian cities of Vancouver and Toronto. He is in the United States to participate in an academic conference at Fordham University in honor of his achievements, to promote his new book and to conduct numerous presentations. He will be awarded an honorary doctorate of humane letters at the University of Michigan's commencement Saturday, May 1.

During his visit to Cornell he will meet with faculty and graduate students of the Southeast Asia Program, meet privately with Cornell President Hunter Rawlings, and staff from Cornell's Kroch Library. The library's Echols Collection on Southeast Asia will display an exhibit of its holdings by and about the author in the library's Asia Reading Room, April 10-25.

The Southeast Asia Program's Office of Publications has recently published a book of Pramoedya's short stories written in the 1950s, translated into English, titled Tales from Djakarta: Caricatures of Circumstances and their Human Beings. The April 1996 issue of

SEAP's journal, Indonesia (#61), features articles about the author and his stories. His latestwork, a memoir, The Mute's Soliloquy is published by Hyperion Press. He achieved international popularity through his series of four books -- also known as the Buru Quartet--which includes This Earth of Mankind, Child of All Nations, Footsteps and House of Glass, all published by Penguin Putnam.

Pramoedya has written numerous works of fiction and non-fiction that have been translated into at least 28 languages. Among his many awards abroad and in the United States are the 1988 Freedom-to-Write Award from PEN American Center, the Fund for Free Expression Award in 1989 and UNESCO's Madanjeet Singh Award in 1996.

Pramoedya was born in 1925 in Blora, Java. During the Japanese occupation of Indonesia, he worked for a news agency then joined the pemuda (youth paramilitary organization for independence movement). Later he was employed as editor of Sadar, the Indonesian edition of The Voice of Free Indonesia and subsequently imprisoned by the Dutch from 1947 to 1949 for this anti-colonial activity. In the years following, he held several jobs as an editor and academic lecturer while continuing to write essays and short stories.

In 1961 he was arrested and held without a trial for almost a year because of his book Hoa Kiau di Indonesia (The Chinese in Indonesia), which challenged the Sukarno government's campaign against the Chinese. He was arrested again for his critical writings and close alignment with the Indonesian Communist Party cultural group (LEKRA). From Oct. 13, 1965, to Dec. 20, 1979, he was imprisoned without trial and exiled in various Indonesian locales. Although Pramoedya was released from prison in 1980, he was confined to Jakarta and had to report to his parole officer every month until Suharto was ousted last year.

For more information about Pramoedya's visit, contact Penny Dietrich at SEAP's Office of Outreach, (607) 275-9452 or (607) 255-3619, ext. 15; e-mail: pn12@cornell.edu; web site: <www.einaudi.cornell.edu/SoutheastAsia&gt;. For more information on the book signing hosted by The Bookery, contact Gary Weissbrot at (607) 273-5055; e-mail: gary@thebookery.com. Additional information about the author is available on the World Wide Web at: <www.access.digex.net/~bardsley/prampage.html&gt;