Hirata was born in Gantung, Belitung on 24 October, he has not made his year of birth public. While he was young, his parents changed his name seven times.Rejecting "holy" names like Muhammad and Ahmad, he eventually chose the name Andrea after reading about an Italian man of the same name in the newspaper; the name Hirata was given to him by his mother, who said that if the name were repeated several times quickly it would sound like 'ahirat', the Indonesianized Arabic word for the afterlife. He grew up in a poor family not far from a government-owned mine.
Hirata started his tertiary education with a degree in economics from the University of Indonesia. After receiving a scholarship from the European Union, he did his master's degree in Europe, first at the University of Paris then at Sheffield Hallam University in Britain, his thesis dealt with telecommunications and the economy.
Hirata released Laskar Pelangi (The Rainbow Troops in 2005. The novel, written in a period of six months, was based on his childhood experiences in Belitung; he later described it as "an irony about a lack of access to education for children in one of the world's wealthiest islands.".The novel went on to sell five million copies, with pirated editions selling 15 million more. It also spawned three sequels: Sang Pemimpi (The Dreamer), Edensor and Maryamah Karpov.
Laskar Pelangi was adapted into a film of the same name in 2008 by directors Riri Riza and Mira Lesmana. He also worked at the telecommunications company Telkom Indonesia, eventually quitting to focus on writing. In 2010 the international rights for the Laskar Pelangi tetralogy were bought by American agent Amer & Asia the rights were later acquired by Kathleen Anderson Literary Management. Afterwards, Hirata opened a library in his hometown.
By 2010, he was spending weekends in Belitung and weekdays in Java. He later published his first English-language short story, "Dry Season", in Washington Square Review. That same year, he spent three months attending a writer's workshop at the University of Iowa.
In 2011, television network SCTV announced a 15-episode serial adaption of Laskar Pelangi; Hirata had previously said he would not allow such an adaptation, but later relented as he felt the network could guarantee quality.
In October 2011, Hirata told Indah Setiawati of The Jakarta Post that he was the only one of his siblings yet to have married; although his mother initially pushed for him to marry quickly, she had relented by the time of the interview.
adapted from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Hirata
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