Anton Kurnia

Anton Kurnia, the Indonesian short-story writer, essayist, literary translator, editor, and publisher who helped bring world literature into Indonesian and who founded Penerbit Baca, died in Bandung on 18 September 2026. He was 52. Publisher Baca announced his death the same evening, saying he had been one of its founders. Indonesian Wikipedia and local cultural reporting recorded the time of death as 5:15 p.m. Western Indonesia Time. His funeral was held the next morning at Maleer Cemetery in Bandung.

Born in Bandung, West Java, on 9 August 1974, Kurnia studied briefly in geology at the Bandung Institute of Technology and later journalism at IAIN Sunan Gunung Djati Bandung. He built his career in Jakarta publishing, rising to editorial manager at Serambi before founding and leading Penerbit Baca. Colleagues and readers knew him as a bridge figure: a working editor who also wrote fiction and criticism, and a translator who treated Indonesian as a language that could carry Nabokov, Joyce, Rushdie, Hugo, and Pamuk with care.

His own books included the short-story collection Insomnia (2004), the essay volumes Dunia Tanpa Ingatan (2004) and Mencari Setangkai Daun Surga (2016), Ensiklopedia Sastra Dunia (2006), and later fiction such as Nostalgia (2023), named by Tempo among the year's best fiction. Stories of his appeared in Horison, Kompas, Tempo, The Jakarta Post, and Asia Literary Review; English translations reached Lontar Foundation's Menagerie 5 and the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival anthology Compassion and Solidarity. He won early prizes for a short story on violence against women and for an essay on national reconciliation tied to Garin Nugroho's film Puisi Tak Terkuburkan. Esquire Indonesia later listed "Cinta Semanis Racun" among its best short stories of all time.

As a public literary organiser he chaired the Literature Committee of the Jakarta Arts Council, directed the Jakarta International Literary Festival, served on Indonesia's National Book Committee (2016-2019), and appeared at Ubud Writers and Readers Festival and the ASEAN Literary Festival. In 2024 he was a writer-in-residence in Dilsberg through UNESCO City of Literature Heidelberg, and spoke at feeLit about writing as his first great love. Across two decades his name on Indonesian title pages, whether as author, editor, or translator, became a quiet mark of trust for readers who discovered Les Miserables, Lolita, and countless other works through his labour.

He is remembered as Mas Anton: a Bandung son who made literature a vocation of service, a publisher who built Baca from the ground up, and a translator whose shelves remain in Indonesian homes. Penerbit Baca, fellow writers including Noorca M. Massardi, and readers across the archipelago marked his passing with prayer and gratitude for a life spent putting books into other people's hands.