Hersri Setiawan

Hersri Setiawan (1936) is a writer, journalist and translator. He studied in Yogyakarta at Gadjah Mada University and the Academy of Film and Dramatic Arts. As a student he became active in the arts and culture and in 1958 joined the left-wing cultural organisation LEKRA (Institute of People’s Culture). Between 1961 and 1965, Hersri was Indonesia’s permanent representative of the Asia-Africa Writers’ Bureau in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Following the events of 1965, Hersri was detained without trial for nine years, seven of which on the island of Buru. After his release, he continued writing about his own experiences and recording the oral histories of other former prisoners as well as exiled members of the Indonesian Left. Many of these writings have been published in Indonesian after the fall of the Suharto regime in 1998. Today, Hersri lives and works in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.