Sorry to see that Indonesian writer, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, has died.  I have used the first volume of his Buru Quartet, This Earth of Mankind, in one of my classes for years now.  His characters, and the sprawling story he tells, are some of the best illustrations of cultural hybridity I have found in my, admittedly limited, reading of fiction.  Pramoedya, and especially his protagonists Minke and Nyai, reminds us of the impossibility of authenticity and the inevitability of synthesis.  We are never "pure," we are always "mixed."  An important thing to keep in mind as nationalists everywhere foment violence in the name of ethnic or religious or cultural purity and exclusion.

    Thanks for the great works, Pram.