PAK Setia Dharma was born in Manado in 1948 and lived there until his family moved to Jakarta in 1952. As a youth he loved sports, particularly basketball, but the young man’s true love was reading. While attending Senior High School at Jakarta’s Cikini Foundation in Menteng, his teacher assigned novels for her students to read. Pak Setia was particularly inspired by Layar Terkembang by Sutan Takdir Alisyahbana, one of the early masters of mo