One May Day commemoration, some workers were arrested, including Pavel, and Maksim Gorky wrote his novel Mat’. The English translation is titled ‘Mother’. Pramoedya Ananta Toer gave his Indonesian translation the title ‘Ibunda’. I think, though, that a better word would have been the familiar ‘Mak’.

It is true that ‘ibunda’ connotes respect and warmth, and the novel’s heroine, Pelagedia Nilovna, who accompanies her son in the