Abdullah Idrus studied law at the University of Indonesia, economics at the Christian University of Indonesia and politics at the National University of Indonesia. He obtained an MA from Monash University where he later began a PhD. He was a war correspondent in Surabaya between 1944 and 1946, and after the war he worked as an editor for the major Indonesian publishing house Balai Pustaka until 1949, and was the founding editor of the journal Indonesia (Djakarta: Balai Pustaka, 1949-1950). He became Managing Director for Education at Garuda Airways until 1961 and then Managing Director of Bi-Karya Publications in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from 1961 to 1965.
Idrus was a lecturer and later senior lecturer in Indonesian literature at Monash University, Melbourne.
His Indonesian novel Dari Ave Maria ke Djalan Lain ke Roma (From Ave Maria to Another Road to Rome, 1945) had run to 16 reprints by 2000. He has translated work by Dostoyevsky, Ivanov and several Dutch authors into Indonesian, and has also published some translations into Malaysian. Most of his work was written prior to his arrival in Australia.
