A Biography Of Malaysian Writers

English translation of: Wajah.

LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE Penang, 1939. Being half Chinese and half English, Philip Hutton always felt like he never belonged. That is until he befriends Hayato Endo, a mysterious Japanese diplomat and master in the art of aikido. But when Japan invades Malaya, Philip realises Endo bears a secret, one powerful enough to jeopardise everything he loves. This masterful début conjures an unforgettable tale of courage, brutality, loyalty, deceit and love.

This “elegant and haunting novel of war, art and memory" (The Independent) award-winning novel from the acclaimed author of The Gift of Rain follows the only Malaysian survivor of a Japanese wartime camp as she begins working for an exiled former gardener of the Emporer. Malaya, 1951. Yun Ling Teoh, the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks solace among the jungle-fringed tea plantations of Cameron Highlands. There she discovers Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner and creator, the enigmatic Aritomo, exiled former gardener of the emperor of Japan. Despite her hatred of the Japanese, Yun Ling seeks to engage Aritomo to create a garden in memory of her sister, who died in the camp. Aritomo refuses but agrees to accept Yun Ling as his apprentice "until the monsoon comes." Then she can design a garden for herself. As the months pass, Yun Ling finds herself intimately drawn to the gardener and his art, while all around them a communist guerilla war rages. But the Garden of Evening Mists remains a place of mystery. Who is Aritomo and how did he come to leave Japan? And is the real story of how Yun Ling managed to survive the war perhaps the darkest secret of all?

The fascinating account of two former British colonies with a shared past but vastly different identities today! Singapore and Malaysia sit astride the sea lanes linking East with West--vital choke points in the world's commerce. Since ancient times, ports along the Silk Road of the Sea were populated by peoples from around the globe who came here to trade and live, carried by the steady flow of goods and the ever-present monsoon winds. Author Christopher Hale recounts many fascinating histories of this region, including: The ancient international trade in spices and the seven voyages to the southern seas of the Chinese eunuch Admiral Zheng He in the 15th century The rise of Islamic kingdoms along rivers bordering the Straits of Malacca and the conquest of Malacca, one of the world's largest cities, by a few hundred Portuguese marauders in 1511 The saga of Sir Stamford Raffles, credited with founding Singapore, and the development of tin mines and vast rubber and oil palm plantations on the Malay Peninsula The disastrous fall of "Fortress Singapore" to the Japanese in World War II after only three weeks of fighting, the worst British military defeat in history The wildly successful film Crazy Rich Asians, set in Singapore, the highest grossing romantic comedy of the decade A Brief History of Singapore and Malaysia tells these and many other compelling stories about the people and events which have shaped these nations as they developed into modern powerhouses of international trade and tourism.

This book brings together fourteen articles by prominent critics of Malaysian Anglophone literature from five different countries: Australia, Italy, Malaysia, Singapore, and the US. It investigates the thematic and stylistic trends in the literary products of selected writers of the tradition in the genres of drama, fiction, and poetry, from its beginnings to the present, focusing mainly on the postcolonial themes of ethnicity, gender, diaspora, and nationalism, which are central to the creativity and imagination of these writers. The book explores the works of not just the established writers of the tradition but also those who have received little critical attention to date but who are equally gifted, such as Adibah Amin, Edward Dorall, Rehaman Rashid, and Huzir Suleiman. The chapters collectively address the challenges and achievements of writers in the English language in a country where English is widely used in daily life and yet marginalised in the creative domain to elevate the status of writings in the national language, i.e., Bahasa Malaysia. The book will demonstrate that in spite of such recurrent neglect of the medium, Malaysia has produced a number of outstanding writers in the language, who are comparable in creativity and craftsmanship to writers of other Anglophone traditions. The book will be of interest to readers and researchers of Malaysian literature, postcolonial literatures, minority literatures, gender studies, and Southeast Asian studies.

Singapore’s Malay (Muslim) community, constituting about 15 per cent of the total population and constitutionally enshrined as the indigenous people of Singapore, have had its fair share of progress and problems in the history of this country. While different aspects of the vicissitudes of life of the community have been written over the years, there has not been a singularly substantive published compendium specifically about the community – in the form of a Bibliography – available. This academic initiative fills this obvious literature gap. The scope and coverage of this Bibliography is manifestly comprehensive, encompassing the different sources of information (print or non-print) about the many facets of life of the Republic’s Malays/Muslims – such as education, economy, politics, culture, history, health, language, religion, arts, and more. The result is a Bibliography that is arguably the most expansive, if not exhaustive treasury collection about the community, ever available anywhere. Scholars and researchers in particular and the public in general should find this Bibliography a highly valuable, indispensable source of information about the rich and varied life of Singapore’s Malay/Muslim community, stretching a period of two centuries – from the time of Stamford Raffles in 1819 until today. The Editors – Hussin Mutalib, Ph.D. (a senior academic with the National University of Singapore), Rokiah Mentol, and Sundusia Rosdi (former senior librarians with Singapore’s National Library Board) – are assisted by professional and experienced librarians.

This book showcases a unique, innovative form for contemporary life narrative scholarship. Life Narrative is a dynamic and interdisciplinary field defined through attention to diverse styles of personal and auto/biographical narration and to subjectivity and ethics in acts of self-representation. The essay is a uniquely sympathetic mode for such scholarship, responsive to diverse methods, genres, and concepts and enabling a flexible, hybrid critical and creative approach. Many of the essays curated for this volume are by the authors of creative works of life writing who are seeking to reflect critically on disciplinary issues connected to practice, ethics, audience, or genre. Others show academics from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds engaged in creative critical self-reflection, using methods of cultural analysis, ethnography, or embodied scholarship to address foundational and emerging issues and concepts in relation to identity, experience, or subjectivity. Essays in Life Writing positions the essay as a unique nexus of creative and critical practice, available to academics publishing peer-reviewed scholarly work from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, and a form of scholarship that is contributing in exciting and vigorous ways to the development of new knowledge in Life Narrative as a field. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Life Writing.