 After the novel was published , it caused considerable discussion . Religious thinkers , Marxist @-@ Leninists , and anarchists decried the novel for not explaining their ideologies in more detail , but literary figures and many in the general public praised it ; this positive reception may have been influenced by the nascent government 's need to promote literature for nation @-@ building . Atheis was translated into Malay before 1970 and into English in 1972 ; it was also adapted into a film with the same title in 1974 . The novel , which received an award from the Indonesian government in 1969 , is one of the UNESCO Collection of Representative Works . 
