Ring of Modern U.S. Life in an 1890s Tale : THIS EARTH OF MANKIND, <i> by Pramoedya Ananta Toer,</i> translated by Max Lane, William Morrow, $23; 350 pages

The author of this elegant novel wrote it (or rather, made it up; recited it), during 14 years he spent as a political prisoner on Buru Island on the Indonesian Archipelago.

Lest that put the reader off in any way, lest anyone think that reading or buying “This Earth of Mankind” would in any way constitute a “good deed,” or that there might be any kind of “edification” involved here, forget it.

Toer--still under house arrest in Jakarta--is as hip and smart and bleak and dark as Dashiell Hammett used to be. He’s as eloquent and sensual as James Baldwin used to be. And Toer’s sense of injustice, the modernity of his sense of injustice, comes closer to our own American film, “Chinatown,” than anything else I can think of.

This novel is about a world where the dice are loaded and the cards are stacked. Everyone knows perfectly well who’s expendable (Anita Hill comes to mind) and who’s going to win when the chips are down. (Think of that Republican senator with those teeny dewlaps, and you’ll see that Toer’s story isn’t just about Surabaya in the 1890s, but any place.)

In Surabaya, in the 1890s, the Javanese had been conquered by the white Protestant, extremely rich and very self-important Dutch. (It wasn’t that ancient Javanese society was any picnic, Toer points out; it was brutal and feudal and the nobles at the top mercilessly ground down the peasants at the bottom.) But the Dutch made a bad situation worse, prattling on and on about the general superiority and humanity of the white European civilization, while rigging every law so that the poor stayed poor, and the rich whites snatched up everything they could get their hands on.

Toer’s hero, Minke, a student at a prestigious Dutch high school, is one of only two “natives” in the student body. His name has come to him because a Dutch teacher almost called him “Monkey” once and barely stopped himself in time. By the 1890s, the Dutch had been in Indonesia long enough so that a generation of half-castes had been sired. So, all rights and privileges went to the Dutch; “mixed bloods” got just a few of those rights, and “natives” were treated like animals, except for the very very few who were thrown a few scraps by the ruling race. This doesn’t sound familiar? Not at all!

Minke is smart. He has a part-time business, he writes for newspapers under a pseudonym. He stays away from his Javanese family. Almost by accident, he is taken one day to the prosperous estate of Herman Mellema, a Dutchman whose native concubine, or nyai , has had two children, runs a huge business, is clever, beautiful and speaks perfect Dutch. Her half-caste son, Robert, hates his mother. Her half-caste daughter, extraordinarily beautiful and kind, loves her mother, her country, the island, the land she works on, and falls wholeheartedly in love with Minke.

The thing is: Nyai loves Minke and aids the young couple’s romance. Minke’s own mother is all for it. Minke--despite some dispiriting setbacks--graduates second in his high school class. His literary career thrives. Nyai’s hard work over years and years has paid off.

By the end of this novel, there should be a disaffected police officer around to say: “Forget it, Minke. It’s Chinatown !” Instead, a brave native woman says: “We fought back . . . as well and honorably as possible.”

Toer is a novelist who should get in line for the Nobel Prize. And his Australian translator, Max Lane, should get a thousand extra awards for his eloquence, for his bravery.

Next: Paul Dean Reviews “Night Over Water” by Ken Follett (William Morrow).