He was primarily known as the author of three volumes of The Complete Works of Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir Munsyi and as the chief editor of the online literary journal Horizon Online, a prominent Indonesian literary magazine managed by Taufiq Ismail.
[2][3] Amin Sweeney was born in England in 1938, and was sent by the British army to Malaya in 1958 to help stop the communist insurgency.
Whilst in the army, he chose to live with the Malay soldiers and moved to Kluang from Melaka where he taught English.
Afterwards, he was an advisor for graduate and postgraduate programs, Chairman of the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies (1986–1991) and a member of the Executive Committee of the Centre for Southeast Asia Studies (1991–1998) at the University of California, Berkeley, US, until he retired and became an emeritus professor in 1998.
His wife Sastri Sunarti, is an editor at Horizon Online and an expert in Bahasa Indonesia; she was also the reason he moved to Jakarta.