Born in Sungai Puar, West Sumatra in 1886 to a leading member of the Minangkabau,[2] Muis received a western education and studied medicine[2] in Jakarta for three years before being forced to pull out due to ill health.

[3] Muis first found employment in the civil service, as a clerk at the Department of Education, but was discriminated by his Dutch colleagues, leaving in 1905,[4] switching to journalism and becoming involved in nationalist publications such as Kaoem Moeda, a paper he co-founded in 1912.

[1] From the late 1920s Muis shifted his focus from politics to creative writing, and in 1927 he initiated correspondence with the state-owned publishing house Balai Pustaka.

[1] In his first novel, Salah Asuhan (Wrong Upbringing), published in 1928, Muis depicted the problem of racial and social discrimination in the tragic story of Hanafi and Corrie.

[6] The Western-oriented Hanafi and the feisty, liberal Corrie represent the conflict pre-independent Indonesia faced in choosing either to adhere to traditional values, or to adopt Western notions of modernity.