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
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