Chuah Guat Eng (Part ii)

Part 2

In the interview that was conducted by UPM’s student, Juliet Lavania Kaur a/p Soba Singh, she asked on Chuah Guat Eng’s opinion about the current status of English Literature in Malaysia. Dr Chuah stated that, the prognosis is good because many younger Malaysians and ex-Malaysians are now writing. More importantly, she emphasise that  these younger writers are well supported by a growing infrastructure: more local and international publishers interested in Malaysian writings; more universities offering courses in Malaysian literature in English; more creative writing courses run by English departments in universities as well as by private individuals; and more reading and discussion groups that meet either virtually on the Internet or physically in educational institutions and in private homes. This means that Malaysians are getting more interested in writings and their involvement in this field, which is the English Literature are stimulates by the growing infrastructures in Malaysia.

Source: Juliet Lavania Kaur a/p Soba Singh

Echoes of Silence

EoS not only deals with issues of post-colonialism and post-Independence Malaysia but also with the subversion of the Western concept of mystery novel itself. The book is a life size protest against Western domination especially in the media industry.

 Her other works

Chuah Guat Eng has published four short stories that were short enlisted of the NST and Shell Writing Competition III in 1992. They are “The Power of Advertising” (published in New Sunday Times, 28 June 1992), “Forbidden Fruits” (NST, 5 July 1992), “The Day Andy Warhol Died” (NST, 9 August 1992) and “The Old House” (NST, 30 August 1992).

These stories address various themes and explore diverse life situations from the male-dominated world of business, to domestic issues of extramarital affairs and guilt betrayal, to child abuse and questions about good parenting, to fears of aging and portrayal of the world of spinsterhood. 

Huzir Sulaiman

About Him

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One of the most critically acclaimed dramatists in Southeast Asia, and a 2007 Yale World Fellow, Huzir Sulaiman writes for theatre, film, television and newspapers, and is a consultant on public policy issues for the arts and heritage sectors.

Huzir was born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and was educated at Princeton University. He now lives in Singapore, where he is a co-founder and Joint Artistic Director of Checkpoint Theatre.

His plays are frequently performed in Malaysia and Singapore and have been presented in Tokyo, Berlin, New York, and London. His work is collected in Eight Plays(Silverfish Books) and his plays - 14 to date - are studied in universities in the region. They range from Atomic Jaya (1998), a classic satire on what would happen if Malaysia decided to construct an atomic bomb, to Cogito (a commission of the 2007 Singapore Arts Festival), a lyrical exploration of grief, memory, and what it means to be human.

Wide Angle, his fortnightly column in Malaysia’s leading English newspaper, The Star, covers diverse topics in culture, politics, and society. He currently teaches playwriting at the National University of Singapore, and is working on a novel.

He may be reached at info@huzirsulaiman.com .

Source:   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huzir-sulaiman

Interview: Huzir Sulaiman of Atomic Jaya

Atomic Jaya is acclaimed playwright Huzir Sulaiman’s cheeky reimagining of Malaysia attempting to build an atomic bomb. He talks to us about the history of the show and the ties that bind Singapore and Malaysia.

ByKhairul Amri

How did the idea for the play come about?
It was inspired by Malaysia’s mega-projects: Petronas Twin Towers, Multimedia Super Corridor, Bakun Dam and bizarre things like the World’s Biggest Ketupat. It was an interesting kind of national hubris that was developing. So I thought to myself, what would be the most mega of national mega-projects? Nuclear weapons, of course!

Do you enjoy taking pot shots at real world issues?
All playwrights work from real life to some extent. My early work dealt quite a bit with society and politics, but my recent work has explored a more interior landscape. Atomic Jaya captures the joyful madcap energy of a certain period of the country and my life.

Are Malaysian authorities OK with the idea?
Absolutely. It was written with a lot of love, and it fundamentally celebrates Malaysian-ness in all its hilarious and crazy forms.

What do you think Singapore would do if Malaysia decided to build the A-bomb?
It’s really not likely to happen, seeing as Malaysia did sign the International Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty more than 40 years ago. But if it did, I’m sure the behind-the-scenes diplomacy would kick into full swing. Again, a series of good meals might sort things out.

How would you describe the differences between a typical Malaysian and a Singaporean?
Singaporeans are a little more punctual, and a little more private. If Singapore was building an atomic bomb, they’d have finished it already, and we wouldn’t know about it.

Do you think the two countries might merge one day?
I don’t think an outright political merger is likely, but greater cooperation and openness would be great. Gastronomically, we would rule the world together.

Lloyd Fernado

About him

Lloyd Fernando was born in Kandy, Sri Lanka in 1926, and migrated to Singapore with his family in 1938. After obtaining his PhD in Literature in English from Leeds University, he served as Head of the English Department at the University of Malaya from 1967 to 1978, then took an early retirement at 52 to study Law in London. Fernando was admitted as Advocate and Solicitor of the High Court of Malaya in 1980, at the age of 54.

Fernando is best known in the literary world for his novel Scorpion Orchid. His other novel, Green is the Colour, also explores the issues of identity and cultures in a multi-ethnic society. For his contribution to the University of Malaya, he was awarded the title of Professor Emeritus in 2005. Fernando passed away in 2008, leaving behind his wife, Marie, two daughters and four grandchildren.

Source: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/804502.Lloyd_Fernando 

His works

v  Green Is The Colour

v  Scorpion Orchid

v  Twenty-Two Malaysian Stories

v  Malaysian Short Stories

v  "New Women" in the Late Victorian Novel

v  Cultures in Conflict

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Source: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/804502.Lloyd_Fernando

Green is The Colour

This novel by Lloyd Fernando is about racial and religious tolerance set against the shadow of the 1969 riots in Kuala Lumpur. A story of humanity struggling against the cold inhumanity of closed minds.

The central concern of this work is how people of different races face the challenges of living side by side. After the infamous May 13, an artificial togetherness has been created to prevent more such occurrence. Then, fresh violence breaks out and into this are thrown several characters of different races, religions and political affiliations, and different levels of tolerance. An uncompromising look at Malaysia's past, it articulates with keen insight some unexpressed truths about how we see each other in a multi-racial world. A Malaysian classic.

Source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5975995-green-is-the-colour

Scorpion Orchid

About this novel

-Malaysian novel to address race as the major social issue challenging Malaysia/ Singapore.

•Fernando states, "I believe no Malaysian writer can claim to be writing with truth if he does not carry, woven into his fiction, the reality of relationships between the races, and its unavoidable undertow of threatened violence.”

SETTING & THEME

•Set in 1950’s Singapore – a time of racial tension and nationalistic uprising

•Theme of national birth and the anxieties present regarding racial conflict and ethnic self interest

SYNOPSIS

An exciting first novel set in pre-independence Singapore. Scorpion Orchid follows the lives of four young men—a Malay, an Eurasian, a Chinese and a Tamil—against a backdrop of racial violence and political factions struggling for dominance. Excerpts from classical Malay and colonial English sources appear throughout the narrative, illuminating the roots and significance of this period in history.

THE TEXT AS METAPHOR

•Text is a metaphor for growth of a new nation •The four young men gain a new awareness of their ethnic identities as the negotiate the race riots that destroy their complacent sense of camaraderie •The new awareness is central to their transition from adolescence to adult life •Represents the Malayan society and the transition between former tolerance and present assertiveness

•Scorpion Orchid generally preserves an allegorical distance between the personal and the political. • The personal and the political develop along parallel lines and mirror one another, and when they do intersect they remain clearly defined

CHARACTERS

•Santi, a Tamil Indian, Sabran, a Malay, Guan Kheng, a Chinese, and Peter, a Eurasian.

•Santinathan – Indian, refuses to observe conventions of university life, gets expelled – ends up as village schoolteacher

•Sabran – Malay, involved in politics, gets arrested and his future prospects somewhat set back considerably 

•Sabran reflects on his family in the kampung (village) that has sacrificed for his education and which exerts a strong emotional pull on him, but is in no position to offer him either comfort or advice.

•Guan Kheng – Chinese, comes from wealthy family, feels betrayed by the Malays who suddenly consider him a foreigner. Peter D’Almeida – Eurasian, confused about his identity, loses faith in ‘new’ Singapore, emigrates to England after he is beaten up in a riot (comes back at the end)

•Sally – uncertain ethnic background and origin, works at a hawker stall, part time prostitute, has an ambiguous relationship with all four men involving sex, money and love, although they pay her for sex she is treated as a friend

Source: http://www.shvoong.com/humanities/theory-criticism/2327783-scorpion-orchid/#ixzz2xRG6eE8i

Sybil Kathigasu

SYBIL KATHIGASU: We know little of local heroes

JUNE 12 was exactly 65 years since Sybil Kathigasu, the freedom fighter, died. In the book, No Dram of Mercy (2006), a memoir of Sybil's memoirs, the author gave an account of a woman (Sybil Kathigasu) of great courage, who should be regarded as a beacon and role model to all Malaysians.
Between the late 1920s and early 1940s, Sybil and her husband, Dr Abdon Clement Kathigasu, operated a clinic in Brewster Road, now known as Jalan Sultan Idris Shah, in Ipoh.
Sybil's warmth, readiness to help and fluency in Cantonese made her popular with the Chinese.
In 1941, the Japanese army bombed Ipoh, forcing Sybil and her family to move to Papan, a town near Ipoh.
It was here that Sybil ran a free clinic, dispensing medicine to locals and fighters of the Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army.
She kept a radio so she could listen to the British Broadcasting Corporation for news and pass on information.
When the Japanese army knew about her subversive activities, she was arrested and tortured. Her fingers were ripped off with pliers and her legs scalded with iron rods.
She was forced to drink large quantities of water before the Japanese military police stepped on her bloated stomach. She suffered damage to the spine and skull after being beaten by bamboo stick.
After Malaya's liberation from the Japanese in 1945, Sybil was flown to England for medical treatment. In 1948, she became the only Malayan woman to receive the George Medal for Gallantry, a high civilian honour given by King George VI.
Several months later, she died from an old wound at the jaw, sustained from the kick of a Japanese boot that had brought on a fatal bout of septicaemia. Her body was buried at St Michael's Church in Ipoh.
Sybil's life is perhaps the best example of unity: a Penangite of Eurasian descent who sacrificed her life for the Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army.
In Fair Park, Ipoh, a road is named after her to commemorate her bravery, but the sad truth is, she has never been mentioned in any Malaysian history book.
Our education system places little emphasis on this subject.
Little is known to schoolchildren about heroes like Sgt Hassan, Lieutenant Adnan, Iban hero Kanang and Sybil. Can the Education Ministry include chapters on local fighters, like Sybil, in history books?

Source: http://www.nst.com.my/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/sybil-kathigasu-we-know-little-of-local-heroes-1.316934

Her book, an autobiography 

NO DRAM OF MERCY
By Sybil Kathigasu

I WONDER how many people of my generation (I’m 39), or the next, know of Sybil Kathigasu? I certainly don’t recall learning about her in school or from my peers. Older relatives, in their re-telling of wartime suffering, did not mention her name.

Had I not picked up a reprint of her memoirs entitled No Dram of Mercy, I’d probably remain ignorant of Kathigasu, recipient of the George Medal, “the highest British civilian award for bravery”.

Kathigasu was unabashedly pro-British (a sample: “I reminded the guard of what Malaya owed to Britain, and of the amount of talent, labour, money and material which had gone to make Malaya the happiest and most advanced country in the East.”), but this Eurasian lady also had pride as a Malayan and did the utmost to assist her fellow nationals, particularly in the town of Papan, Perak.

Against the backdrop of the Japanese invasion and occupation of Malaya, Kathigasu, whose husband was a doctor, provided medical aid to the civilian population of all races, and to members of the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA).

Her tenacious character is first revealed in her refusal to join the British withdrawal to Singapore. Then there’s her persistence in tuning in to radios (instead of turning them in) for news from the free world. Her perilous aid to MPAJA guerrillas finally led to her betrayal and incarceration by the dreaded Kempetei (Japanese secret police).

In No Dram, the author does not wallow in self-pity, choosing not to dwell on personal suffering but telling of beatings and torture in an almost matter-of-fact way:

“The places on which the blows were concentrated were those containing no vital nerve or organ so that no permanent injury resulted to the victim ? these parts of my body were soon solid bruises.”

That which apparently mattered more to her was the well being of her loved ones, including her five-year old child, Dawn, who was strung up a tree and threatened with immolation by Kathigasu’s sadistic interrogator, Sergeant Yoshimura. 

Kathigasu’s selflessness can best be summed up in her own words: “The thought (of death) did not disturb me ? and I had the consolation of knowing that my family would be safe, and that I had successfully resisted all attempts to wring from me information about the guerrillas and their contacts.” 

Her sudden demise not long after liberation casts a shadow on her otherwise triumphant story, and, unfortunately, we learn not of the fate of several important characters in her book.

These include Moru, her link with the guerrillas; Chen Yen of the MPAJA; and Dr A.C. Kathigasu, her husband. 

With so little in evidence today of Sybil Kathigasu’s grit and sacrifice, No Dram of Mercy serves as reminder (or introduction, for those of my generation, perhaps) of a woman who survived terrible odds with only her unwavering faith in justice and in God, and of a time when Malayans of all races persevered in the face of adversity.  

Source: http://www.thestar.com.my/story.aspx/file=%2f2007%2f3%2f25%2flifebookshelf%2f14273826&sec=lifebookshelf

Tan Twan Eng

Tan Twan Eng was born in Penang, but lived in various places in Malaysia

as a child. He studied law through the University of London, and later worked

as an advocate and solicitor in one of Kuala Lumpur's most reputable law firms.

He also has a first-dan ranking in akido and is a strong proponent for the

conservation of heritage buildings. He has spent the last year travelling

around South Africa, and currently lives in Cape Town where he is working

on his second book.


His first book, The Gift of Rain (2007)

The Gift of Rain

In 1939, 16-year-old Philip - the half-Chinese youngest child of Noel Hutton, head of one of Penang?s great trading families ? feels alienated from both the British and Chinese communities. He discovers a sense of belonging in his unexpected friendship with Hayato Endo, a Japanese diplomat who rents an island from his father. Philip proudly shows his new friend around his adored island of Penang, and Endo teaches him about Japanese language and culture, and trains him in the art and discipline of aikido. But such knowledge comes at a terrible price. The enigmatic Endo is bound by obligations of his own; and too late, as the Japanese invade Malaya, Philip realises that his sensei ? to whom he owes absolute loyalty ? is a Japanese spy. Forced into collaborating with the Japanese to safeguard his family and their interests, Philip turns into the ultimate outsider, trusted by none and hated by many. Tormented by his part in events, by deaths he is powerless to prevent, he risks everything to redress his moral balance by working in secret to save as many people as he can from the savagery of the invaders, and in so doing finds out who and what he really is. Driven by the prophetic words of an ancient soothsayer, ?The Gift of Rain? explores the opposing ideas of predestination and self-determination, as Philip traces a perilous and sometimes unclear path through the terrible years of the war. It takes the reader from the final days of the Chinese emperors to the dying era of the British Empire, and through the magical temples, exhilarating cities and forbidding rain forests of Malaya. ?The Gift of Rain? is epic, haunting and unforgettable, richly shot through with themes and ideas, a novel about agonisingly divided loyalties and unbearable loss. But it is also about human courage and ? ultimately ? about the nature of enduring love.

Source: http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/e/tan-twan-eng/gift-of-rain.htm

Second novel 2012

The Garden of Evening Mists

"On a mountain above the clouds, in the central highlands of Malaya lived the man who had been the gardener of the Emperor of Japan.”

Teoh Yun Ling was seventeen years old when she first heard about him, but a war would come, and a decade would pass before she travels up to the Garden of Evening Mists to see him, in 1951. A survivor of a brutal Japanese camp, she has spent the last few years helping to prosecute Japanese war criminals. Despite her hatred of the Japanese, she asks the gardener, Nakamura Aritomo, to create a memorial garden for her sister who died in the camp. He refuses, but agrees to accept Yun Ling as his apprentice ‘until the monsoon’ so she can design a garden herself.

Staying at the home of Magnus Pretorius, the owner of Majuba Tea Estate and a veteran of the Boer War, Yun Ling begins working in the Garden of Evening Mists. But outside in the surrounding jungles another war is raging. The Malayan Emergency is entering its darkest days, the communist-terrorists murdering planters and miners and their families, seeking to take over the country by any means, while the Malayan nationalists are fighting for independence from centuries of British colonial rule.

But who is Nakamura Aritomo, and how did he come to be exiled from his homeland? And is the true reason how Yun Ling survived the Japanese camp connected to Aritomo and the Garden of Evening Mists?

Source: http://www.tantwaneng.com/

Tash Aw

Tash Aw

Tash Aw was born in Taiwan to Malaysian parents and grew up in Kuala Lumpar.

He moved to England in his teens, and studied Law at the Universities of Cambridge and Warwick. He moved to London and undertook various jobs, including working as a lawyer for four years. He then studied Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia.

His first novel, The Harmony Silk Factory (2005), won the 2005 Whitbread First Novel Award, and the Commonwealth Writers Prize (South East Asia and South Pacific Region Best First Book). It juxtaposes three accounts of the life of Johnny Lim, a Chinese peasant in rural Malay. His second novel is Map of the Invisible World (2009), set in Indonesia and Malaysia in the mid-1960s.

First novel (2005)

The Harmony Silk Factory (2005) made the Man Booker Prize longlist, won a Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Whitbread First Novel Award, making it one of the most garlanded literary debuts since Zadie Smith shook things up with White Teeth (2000).

Its author Tash Aw was born in Taiwan and grew up in Kuala Lumpar. In his late teens Aw moved to England to study Law at Cambridge. After a brief career as a lawyer he took the Creative Writing MA at UEA, before publishing a first novel which Doris Lessing described as ‘unputdownable.’

Aw is inspired by heavyweight writers such as Faulker, Nabakov, Conrad and Flaubert, and wears those influences on his sleeve. From Faulkner he has taken multiple narrators and non-linear narrative; from Nabakov a delight in the possibilities of language; from Conrad an interest in the dark, nightmarish and revelatory aspect of journeys; and from Flaubert a heightened, intense reality generated by deliberate and sensitive use of detail. In essence The Harmony Silk Factory is a story about the telling of stories, although its post-modern trickery is subtle rather than showy. It is perhaps Aw’s multiplicity of perspectives – by birth, upbringing and education he is able to draw on experience and knowledge of three distinct cultures – that drew him towards the kind of fiction in which a single omniscient viewpoint is eschewed.  

Set before, during and after the Japanese invasion of British-administered Malaya in the 1940s, The Harmony Silk Factory is the story of Johnny Lim, poor son of Chinese immigrants, who, we are told, became a legendary textile merchant, smuggler, political activist and murderer in the Kinta Valley. The first part of the novel is narrated by his son Jasper. Keen to understand the truth of a father he calls a ‘liar, a cheat, a traitor and a skirt-chaser,’ Jasper has devoted many years of his life to the pursuit of ‘The True Story of the Infamous Chinaman called Johnny.’ From early on Jasper reveals himself to be that most familiar of figures: the unreliable narrator. ‘We all know the retelling of history can never be perfect,’ he says, ‘especially when the piecing together of the story has been done by a person with as modest an intellect as myself.’ However, far from the corrupt, womanising ‘monster’ Jasper would have us see, the Johnny we are shown is quite different. While full of undoubted guile he is a quiet and sensitive man, the victim of bullying British managers in the tin-mine where he works, a diligent worker and an inspired salesman. Johnny’s brilliant gift with machines is resented by his bosses and, after being forced out of the mine through no fault of his own, he ends up with a new career in the Tiger Brand Trading Company, which he is eventually to take over.

The second and third parts of the novel deal with the honeymoon trip to the mysterious Seven Maiden Islands which Johnny takes with his beautiful wife Snow Soong, daughter of the wealthiest man in the valley. Snow and Johnny travel there in the company of three chaperones: Mamoru Kunichika, a sophisticated Japanese professor, repugnant English mine-owner Frederick Honey, and Honey’s compatriot, the effete aesthete Peter Wormwood, who sets himself up as Johnny’s confidante. Snow, an assured and elegant woman, is not in love with Johnny and is suspicious of, although attracted to the professor. Part two takes the form of her diary and tells of the group’s near disastrous voyage to the island and what takes place upon their arrival. Part three is narrated by the elderly Wormwood who, from the overgrown garden of his old people’s home, looks back upon his flight from England in search of a ‘tropical Arcadia’ in the East. Wormword recalls his meeting with Johnny Lim and the others, and his own version of what happened on the island.

Like Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 film Rashômon, The Harmony Silk Factory deals with the near impossibility of knowing someone, the deception of appearances, and the problematic nature of testimony. Jasper wants us to see his father as a man of malice; Snow shows a Johnny naïve and ineffectual; and Wormwood portrays an enigmatic figure with an enquiring mind distinct from those around him. Their conflicting treatments tell us as much about their own characters and prejudices as they do Johnny Lim. Who are we to trust? Who is telling the truth? Whose version of events should we believe?

The ambition, assurance and confidence of Aw’s debut novel is impressive. From its formal daring – particularly the decision to use multiple narrators – to the broad sweep of its narrative, Aw has seemingly done anything in his power to avoid writing an autobiographical bildungsroman. Most readers will know very little about the history of Malaysia and the fight for control of South East Asia in the middle of the last century. In literature it has received little attention. Most English-speaking readers will know from the work of Anthony Burgess and his trilogy on the end of Empire. And in a sense Aw’s book fulfils one of Hilary Mantel’s prescriptions for what makes a novel a novel: it brings us news.

The Harmony Silk Factory is far stronger in its truly striking opening section. Jasper Lim is a fine creation, full of false modesty and paper-thin self-deprecation. In the second and third parts Aw is not quite able to capture the bite, wit and energy of his opening narrator. The Soong and Wormwood voices do not convince in the same way and the reader cannot help but long for the return of Jasper. Nevertheless, the gradual metamorphoses in the novel’s mood and thematic emphasis, from the dash and impudence of Jasper’s mischievous pursuit of truth, to the regret and emotional pain of Peter Wormword’s resigned confessional, is affecting. Aw handles this shift in tone remarkably well. It suggests he has quite a future ahead of him.  

Source: http://literature.britishcouncil.org/tash-aw

Second novel (2009)

Map of the Invisible World By Tash Aw: review

Tash Aw's Map of the Invisible World lays out a grid of intrigue and quests but leaves Holly Kyte unsure of the route

Tash Aw once said that to find innovative fiction set in south-east Asia you have to go back to Joseph Conrad. His mercurial, Costa-winning debut, The Harmony Silk Factory, redressed that with apparent ease. His second offering, Map of the Invisible World, paints an equally redolent portrait of the region, but one that is also intrinsically flawed.

Amid the simmering unrest of postcolonial Indonesia in 1964, the novel opens with 16-year-old orphan Adam watching as his adoptive father Karl – a Dutch Indonesian – is arrested under Sukarno’s 'repatriation’ drive. Adam’s subsequent search for his father propels the narrative on to the acrid streets of Jakarta where he enlists the help of Margaret, an old friend of Karl’s who prides herself on being a well-integrated, perceptive Westerner – an expert at reading the 'Asian mask of inscrutability’ – and who is, of course, utterly mistaken.

Added to this is a shadowy parallel narrative. Adam, we learn, has an older brother, Johan, whom he can barely remember. Johan was adopted by a rich Malaysian family and the separation plagues them both. While Johan lives in a repetitive haze of hedonism to forget his guilt, Adam is duped by the promise of reunion and, like a latter-day Oliver Twist, is swept into a dangerous world he does not understand, becoming the unwitting pawn in an assassination plot.

It quickly transpires that this is a story riddled with quests. The search for Karl is only compounded by the many psychological missions going on here: to achieve self-assertion, find the meaning of family, rediscover buried memories and ultimately reclaim that elusive 'real life’ that seems always to be 'somewhere else, [as if] someone has stolen it’.

The theme may have unity but reading this novel is a divisive experience. When contemplating the nagging ache of separation or the futility of searching for 'invisible’ worlds, the book works beautifully. Aw’s prose is, after all, as sensitive and insightful as ever, especially when sketching the wistful memories and anecdotal scraps of history that flesh out both characters and country alike.

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/5361105/Map-of-the-Invisible-World-By-Tash-Aw-review.html

Third Novel (2013)

Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw: review

When we think of the great immigrant novels we think instinctively of the great immigrant nation: America. We think of Ellis Island, of the dream of becoming American. It’s a process that has lent itself easily to fiction because there is something teleological about the way Americans think of themselves. It’s as if the process of becoming American is plotted, part of some great narrative.

Tash Aw’s latest book is a new kind of immigrant novel. One that takes its place in our increasingly multipolar world and is, in some ways, a challenge to the old narrative. The central characters are all Malaysians who have moved to today’s city of growth and opportunity. Of course, now it’s not New York, it’s Shanghai.

For all five, money is the dominant social force. Walter Chao is an elusive billionaire, all fortune-cookie wisdom and business advice. He might go into partnership with Yinghui Leong, a one-time idealist and now independent businesswoman who once dated the brother of Justin CK Lim, a property magnate down on his luck who loves Yinghui from afar and lives in the same block of flats as Phoebe Aiping, an ambitious illegal immigrant who works for Yinghui and dates Walter…

This level of interconnectedness would stretch verisimilitude were the book set in Ambridge, let alone a city of 23million, but this, I suspect, is the point. As the chance encounters pile up, you realise that the realism is being undermined on purpose: it is an inauthentic story for inauthentic lives. The characters struggle to feel things and can’t ever pin down Shanghai, where there is no order, nor plan.

This is not America: there is no constitution to believe in, no sense they are helping to build a shining city on the hill. The country itself is living a lie: nominally socialist, it is nakedly exploitative, with an emblematic city that is cold and unforgiving. Each of them seems to contain within them a fearful knowledge: there is no conventional narrative for the immigrant in China.

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/fictionreviews/9888352/Five-Star-Billionaire-by-Tash-Aw-review.html

Chuah Guat Eng

Chuah Guat Eng. (Part 1)

Chuah Guat Eng is a Malaysian Peranakan Chinese writer born December 1, 1943 in Rembau, Negeri Sembilan. She was Malaysia's first English-language woman novelist.

She received her early education at the Methodist Girls' School, Klang and Victoria Institution, Kuala Lumpur.

She read English Literature at University of Malaya Kuala Lumpur, and German Literature at Ludwig-Maximilian University, Munich. She received a PhD from National University of Malaysia in 2008 for her thesis "From Conflict to Insight: A Zen-based Reading Procedure for the Analysis of Fiction".

Her Works

• Novel

Echoes of Silent

'In March 1970, as a direct result of the May 1969 racial riots, I left Malaysia.' Thus begins the story of Lim Ai Lian, a Chinese Malaysian. In Germany she meets and falls in love with Michael Templeton, an Englishman born and brought up in the district of Ulu Banir, where his father, Jonathan Templeton, now a Malaysian citizen, owns a plantation. In late 1973, Ai Lian returns home to be with her sick and dying father. The following February she pays the Templetons a long delayed visit. On the day of her arrival a murder takes place and Ai Lian is soon involved in trying to find the murderer. In the process she finds herself learning about racial prejudice, truth and deception, guilt and innocence, womanhood, love, and the way past silences echo into the present.

Days of Change

DAYS OF CHANGE is a sequel to ECHOES OF SILENCE. The narrator is 55-year old Hafiz, whose name means 'the preserver' and 'the memorizer'. When his story begins, Hafiz is suffering from memory loss following a fall down a ravine in Ulu Banir. Unable to talk to a psychiatrist, he uses the I Ching, the Chinese 'book of changes' to trigger his memory. His objectives: to remember the circumstances of his fall, and why he now feels repulsed by his beautiful young wife. His experiment results in 8 notebooks, in which he records his memories of his childhood, the women in his life, his battle against a major corporation bent on appropriating his land and flooding the Banir valley for a Disneyland-type theme park, and his efforts to contribute to Malaysia's progress and development while preserving local traditional knowledge and his own moral integrity. Through Hafiz's memories, thoughts, and dreams, DAYS OF CHANGE provides glimpses of the socio-political changes and ethical challenges Malaysians have had to cope with since Independence.

• Short Story

The Old House & Other Short Stories