This Earth of Mankind is the first book in Pramoedya Ananta Toer's Buru Quartet. Hasta Mitra first published it in 1980. The story happens at the end of the Dutch colonial rule in Indonesia. Pramoedya wrote the novel in prison on Buru island in eastern Indonesia. Pramoedya told the story aloud to other prisoners in 1973 because he was not allowed to write. The story spread through all the prisoners until 1975. Then Pramoedya was finally allowed to write the full story.
The main character and narrator of This Earth of Mankind is a Javanese boy named Minke. He attends an elite Dutch school. Minke's life becomes dangerous when he falls in love with Annelies, the beautiful Indo daughter of Nyai Ontosoroh. In This Earth of Mankind, Pramoedya showed the racism of the Dutch colony.
The Indonesian Attorney General banned This Earth of Mankind in 1981. Many copies of the first editions survived. In 2005 the publisher Lentera Depantara started to publish it again in Indonesia. It had already been published worldwide in 33 languages.