Achdiat Mihardja was born in Cibatu, West Java. He published, and had his works performed, in Indonesian and English. He was educated at Voorbereident Hoger Onderwijs Oosters Letterkundige Afdeling, an Oriental languages and literature senior high school; at the University of Indonesia where he studied contemporary Western Philosophy and Tomistic Philosophy; and in the USA and western Europe where he studied adult education. In 1956 he studied in Australia under the Colombo Plan. He worked successively as a teacher in the Indonesian educational system, as an editor of the daily newspaper Bindang Timur, as a freelance journalist and, from 1941, as an editor in the government publishing house Balai Pustaka. He was a freedom fighter during the revolution (1945-1949). After independence in 1950, he became the head of editorial staff at Balai Pustaka, head of the Cultural Inspectorate in the Ministry of Education and Culture, and a lecturer at the University of Indonesia.
Mihardja was a chairperson or member of committees of various cultural organisations and institutions including chair of the Indonesian Centre of the International PEN Club, deputy chair of the Indonesian Writers' Association (OPI), and member of the Executive Committee of the Indonesian National Commission for UNESCO. From 1961 he was a senior lecturer in Indonesian at the Australian National University until his retirement in the early 1970s. He received literary awards in Indonesia in 1957 and 1970.
