eric forbes’s book addict’s guide to good books

Preeta Samarasan Gets Reviewed in the New York Times!

2008-07-26T16:26:00.000-07:00

ALLEGRA GOODMAN, the author of Intuition and Kaaterskill Falls, reviews Preeta Samarasan’s Evening Is the Whole Day (Houghton Mifflin, 2008) in the New York Times Book Review of July 27, 2008.

“Her ambitious spiraling plot, her richly embroidered prose, her sense of place, and her psychological acuity are stunning. Readers, responding to the setting, will immediately compare her to Kiran Desai. I think Samarasan’s dialogue and description are reminiscent of Eudora Welty, another woman who knew how to write about family and race and class and secrets and heat,” Goodman concludes in her review.

Preeta Samarasan will be making an appearance at the MPH Breakfast Club on Saturday, October 25, 2008

QUILL The Ubud Issue

2008-07-25T04:32:00.000-07:00

I AM AT THE MOMENT editing and putting the final touches to the Ubud issue of Quill magazine, a special 48-page issue of the quarterly for the 2008 Ubud Writers and Readers Festival on October 14-19, 2008, in Bali, Indonesia. There are interviews, features, essays and a short story by Linda Christanty, an Indonesian journalist who also dabbles in short stories. I’m afraid there just aren’t enough pages to put in all that I want to put in.

There are interesting interviews with Aravind Adiga (The White Tiger), Camilla Gibb (Sweetness in the Belly: 2006 Trillium Book Award), Indra Sinha (Animal’s People: shortlisted for the 2007 Man Booker Prize for Fiction), Preeta Samarasan (Evening Is the Whole Day), Vikram Seth (A Suitable Boy: 1994 Commonwealth Writers Prize), Deepika Shetty, Chiew-Siah Tei (Little Hut of Leaping Fishes: longlisted for the 2007 Man Asian Literary Prize), Alexis Wright (Carpentaria: 2007 Miles Franklin Literary Award), and more. There are essays by Kunal Basu (The Japanese Wife), Matthew Condon (The Trout Opera: shortlisted for the 2008 Christina Stead Prize for Fiction), Tishani Doshi (Countries of the Body: 2006 Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection), Camilla Gibb, Jamie James (The Snake Charmer: A Life and Death in Pursuit of Knowledge), Dyah Merta, Preeta Samarasan, Chiew-Siah Tei and Lijia Zhang (“Socialism Is Great!”: A Worker’s Memoir of the New China).

Zafar Anjum explores the highways and byways of the Indian publishing world, while Janet Tay asks why the short story keeps playing second fiddle to the novel when it is the prose’s equivalent to the lyric poem. Another highlight is Sharon Bakar’s interview with Preeta Samarasan, the latest Malaysian writer to make it in the international publishing world with her début novel, Evening Is the Whole Day, which has been hailed as “a magical, exuberant tragic-comic vision of postcolonial Malaysia reminiscent of Rushdie and Roy.”

This special issue of Quill magazine will only be distributed at the 2008 Ubud Writers and Readers Festival

Acknowledgments: Thank you to all authors for their gracious contributions. Thank you to Janet De Neefe, Kadek Krishna Adidharma and Andy Ewing of the 2008 Ubud Writers and Readers Festival for their help in putting the issue together
Photographs from top to bottom: Tishani Doshi, Alexis Wright, Matthew Condon, Preeta Samarasan, Camilla Gibb, Janet De Neefe and Lijia Zhang

QUOTABLE QUOTES

2008-07-24T04:11:00.000-07:00

“AND THERE WERE THE SMELLS, always the smells that remain unchanged even to this day—the scents of spices drying in the sun, sweetmeats roasting on charcoal grills, curries bubbling on fiery stoves, dried salted fish swaying on strings, nutmeg, pickled shrimps—all these swirled and mixed with the scent of the sea, fusing into a pungent concoction that entered us and lodged itself into the memory of our hearts.” Tan Twan Eng, in The Gift of Rain (Myrmidon, 2007; Weinstein, 2008)

“SOMETIMES she would hook an orange peel with her nail so it would sputter a little of its pungent, spicy juice on her finger. She avoided the hairy egg-shaped kiwis and wormlike string beans. She liked to stroke the light, feathery bunches of dill and parsley, and to squeeze artichokes, which felt like pine cones, but soft ones. She liked to pat cantaloupes and tap watermelons with her index finger to hear the hollow sound they made. Most of all, Nina loved broccoli.” Lara Vapnyar, in Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love (Pantheon, 2008)

“OUTSIDE, the blue hour has arrived. Everything draws closer; the shed, the edge of the wood, the lake beyond the trees, it is as if the tinted air binds the world together and there is nothing disconnected out there. That’s a good thing to think about, but whether it is true or not is a different matter. To me it is better to stand alone, but for the moment the blue world gives a consolation I am not sure I want, and do not need, and still I take it.” Per Petterson, in Out Stealing Horses [trans. from the Norwegian, Ut og stjoele hester (2003), by Anne Born] (Harvill Secker, 2005/Vintage, 2006; Graywolf Press, 2007)

“THEY SETTLED DOWN at the wooden tables in a sort of rumble of well-being, steam rising from their tatters. Their ageless faces, so bare and shiny with use that they let the light through, would begin to glow like old cooking pots. They played draughts, lapping tea from saucers with long-drawn sighs, or sat round a basin of warm water and soaked their sore feet. The better off puffed away at a nargileh, and between fits of coughing sometimes recited one of those visionary stanzas for which Persia has had no equal over a thousand years. The winter sun on blue walls, the fine scent of tea, the tapping of draughts on the board—everything had such a peculiar lightness that one wondered whether this bunch of horny-handed seraphim might lift off in a great flapping of wings, bearing the tea house away.” Nicholas Bouvier, describing a Persian tea house in winter where porters gather in his book, The Way of the World (trans. from the French by Robyn Marsack) (Marlboro Press, 1994; Elan Press, 2007)

“WE THINK WE KNOW THE ONES we love, and though we should not be surprised to find that we don’t, it is heartbreak nonetheless.” Andrew Sean Greer, in The Story of a Marriage (Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008)

“I TRIED to make the best of being a bachelor. My married or otherwise engaged friends put a positive spin on it by pointing out that I never had to eat with boring couples, bicker, clean up after myself, shop, talk about my feelings, talk about her feelings, or be anywhere besides work and home. I didn’t have to remember birthdays or anniversaries or Valentine’s Day, nor did I have to think about the toilet bowl lid or hide my pornography or apologize. The last point was especially important to them. Being alone, they said, meant never having to say you’re sorry.” Josh Emmons, in Prescription for a Superior Existence (Scribner, 2008)

Believe it or not, it's the Booker Prize season ... AGAIN!

2008-07-22T04:09:00.000-07:00

BELIEVE IT OR NOT, the Booker Prize season is upon us again! It’s the season that celebrates excellence in contemporary literary fiction. The publishing world awaits the longlist with bated breath and much eagerness. The longlist will be announced on July 29, 2008, while the shortlist will be announced on September 9, 2008. The winner will be announced on October 14, 2008, the day the 2008 Ubud Writers and Readers Festival begins in Bali.

There are many new novels from former Booker Prize-winners (James Kelman, Salman Rushdie and Peter Carey) as well as several new ones from past nominees (Peter Ackroyd, Sebastian Barry, Damon Galgut, Doris Lessing, David Lodge, Clare Morrall and Tim Winton). And, of course, let’s not forget such novelists as Louis de Bernières, Carol Birch, Melvyn Bragg, Geraldine Brooks, John Burnside, Louise Dean, Anne Donovan, Stella Duffy, Helen Dunmore, Robert Edric, Eva Figes, Helen Garner, Derek Johns, Amitav Ghosh, Linda Grant, Hugo Hamilton, James Hamilton-Paterson, John Harwood, Philip Hensher, James Kelman, Michelle de Kretser, Hanif Kureishi, Margot Livesey, Joan London, Richard Mason, James Meek, Alex Miller, Julie Myerson, Joseph O’Neill, David Park, Manil Suri, Adam Thorpe, Roma Tearne, James Wilson and Alexis Wright. And several first-time authors like Aravind Adiga, Isabel Fonseca, Edward Hogan, Mohammed Hanif, Sadie Jones, Preeta Samarasan and Robin Yassin-Kassab were especially impressive.

So, who do you think should or will be longlisted?
The following are just some of my favourites this year:

1. The White Tiger (Atlantic, 2008) / Aravind Adiga
2. The Secret Scripture (Faber and Faber, 2008) / Sebastian Barry
3. A Partisan’s Daughter (Harvill Secker, 2008) / Louis de Bernières
4. Scapegallows (Virago, 2007) / Carol Birch
5. Remember Me (Sceptre, 2008) / Melvyn Bragg
6. People of the Book (Viking/Fourth Estate, 2008) / Geraldine Brooks
7. Glister (Jonathan Cape, 2008) / John Burnside
8. His Illegal Self (Faber and Faber, 2008) / Peter Carey
9. The Idea of Love (Penguin/Fig Tree, 2008) / Louise Dean
10. The Room of Lost Things (Virago, 2008) / Stella Duffy
11. Counting the Stars (Penguin/Fig Tree, 2008) / Helen Dunmore
12. In Zodiac Light (oubleday, 2008) / Robert Edric
13. Journey to Nowhere (Granta, 2008) / Eva Figes
14. Attachments (Chatto and Windus, 2008) / Isabel Fonseca
15. The Impostor (Atlantic Books, 2008) / Damon Galgut
16. The Spare Room (Text Publishing, 2008) / Helen Garner
17. Sea of Poppies (John Murray, 2008) / Amitav Ghosh
18. The Clothes on Their Backs (Virago, 2008) / Linda Grant
19. Disguise (Fourth Estate, 2008) / Hugo Hamilton
20. Rancid Pansies (Faber & Faber, 2008) / James Hamilton-Paterson
21. A Case of Exploding Mangoes (Jonathan Cape, June 2008) / Mohammed Hanif
22. The Seance (Jonathan Cape, 2008) / John Harwood
23. The Northern Clemency (HarperCollins/Fourth Estate, 2008) / Philip Hensher

24. Blackmoor (Simon and Schuster, 2008) / Edward Hogan
25. Wakening (Portobello, 2008) / Derek Johns
26. The Outcast (Chatto and Windus, 2008) / Sadie Jones
27. Kieron Smith, Boy (2008) / James Kelman
28. The Lost Dog (Allen and Unwin, 2007; Chatto and Windus, 2008) / Michelle de Kretser
29. Something to Tell You (Faber and Faber, 2008) / Hanif Kureishi
30. Alfred and Emily (4th Estate, 2008) / Doris Lessing
31. The House on Fortune Street (HarperCollins, 2008) / Margot Livesey
32. Deaf Sentence (Harvill Secker, 2008) / David Lodge
33. The Good Parents (Vintage, 2008) / Joan London
34. The Lighted Rooms (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2008) / Richard Mason
35. We Are Now Beginning Our Descent (2008) / James Meek
36. Landscape of Farewell (Allen and Unwin, 2007) / Alex Miller
37. The Language of Others (Sceptre, 2008) / Clare Morrall
38. Out of Breath (Jonathan Cape, 2008) / Julie Myerson
39. Netherland (Fourth Estate/Pantheon, 2008) / Joseph O’Neill
40. The Truth Commissioner (Bloomsbury, 2008) / David Park
41. The Enchantress of Florence (Jonathan Cape, 2008) / Salman Rushdie
42. Evening Is the Whole Day (Fourth Estate/Houghton Mifflin, 2008) / Preeta Samarasan

43. The Age of Shiva (Bloomsbury, 2008) / Manil Suri
44. Bone China (Harper Press, 2008) / Roma Tearne
45. The Standing Pool (Jonathan Cape, 2008) / Adam Thorpe
46. Consolation (Faber and Faber, 2008) / James Wilson
47. Breath (Picador, 2008) / Tim Winton
48. Carpentaria (Giramondo, 2007) / Alexis Wright
49. The Road From Damascus (Hamish Hamilton, 2008) / Robin Yassin-Kassab

Who are the judges for 2008?

From left to right: Michael Portillo, Alex Clark, Louise Doughty, James Heneage and Hardeep Singh Kohli

What I Found at .. MPH Mid Valley

2008-07-18T06:58:00.000-07:00

Novels
1. Things Fall Apart (1959) / Chinua Achebe
2. The Hakawati (Picador, 2008) / Rabih Alameddine
3. Skylark Farm / Antonia Arslan
4. The Law of Dreams (Steerforth Press, 2006; Canongate, 2006) / Peter Behrens
5. The Lizard Cage / Karen Connolly
6. The Eyrie / Stevie Davies
7. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Faber and Faber, 2008/Riverhead Books, 2007) / Junot Díaz
8. Being Emily / Anne Donovan
9. Blood Kin (Atlantic, 2008; Atlantic, 2007) / Ceridwen Dovey
10. Sea of Poppies (John Murray, 2008) / Amitav Ghosh
11. Helpless (Little, Brown, 2007; Abacus, 2008) / Barbara Gowdy
12. De Niro’s Game () / Rawi Hage
13. Sorry (Harvill Secker, 2007; Vintage, 2008) / Gail Jones
14. Dreams of Speaking (Harvill Secker, 2006; Vintage, 2007) / Gail Jones
15. Let It Be Morning (trans. from the Hebrew by Miriam Shlesinger) (Black Cat, 2006; Atlantic Books, 2007) / Sayed Kashua
16. Day (Jonathan Cape, 2007) / A.L. Kennedy
17. The Lost Dog (first published in Australia by Allen and Unwin in November 2007) (Chatto and Windus, 2008) / Michelle de Kretser
18. The End of East (Thomas Dunne Books, 2008) / Jen Sookfong Lee
19. Beijing Coma (trans. from the Chinese by Flora Drew) (Chatto & Windus, 2008) / Ma Jian
20. Children of the Revolution (Jonathan Cape, 2007; Vintage, 2008) / Dinaw Mengestu
21. The Museum of Dr Moses / Joyce Carol Oates
22. The Gravedigger’s Daughter / Joyce Carol Oates
23. Netherland (Fourth Estate/Pantheon, 2008) / Joseph O’Neill
24. The Friends of Meager Fortune / David Adams Richards
25. Evening Is the Whole Day (4th Estate/HarperCollins, 2008) / Preeta Samarasan
26. More Than It Hurts You (Dutton, 2008) / Darin Strauss
27. Little Hut of Leaping Fishes (Picador, 2008) / Chiew-Siah Tei
28. The Road Home (Chatto & Windus, 2007; Vintage, 2008) / Rose Tremain
29. Between Each Breath (Jonathan Cape, 2007; Vintage, 2008) / Adam Thorpe
30. If Today Be Sweet (Harper Perennial, 2008; first published in hardcover in 2007 by William Morrow) / Thrity Umrigar
31. Breath (Picador, 2008) / Tim Winton

Stories
1. Say You’re One of Them (Little, Brown, 2008) / Uwem Akpan
2. The O. Henry Prize Stories 2008 (Originally published in hardcover in the U.S. by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2007) (Anchor Books/Random House, 2008) / Laura Furman (ed.)
3. No One Belongs Here More Than You () / Miranda July
4. Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures () / Vincent Lam
5. The Complete Stories (Vintage, 2008) / David Malouf
6. The Size of the World (W.W. Norton, 2008) / Joan Silber
7. Cheating at Canasta (Viking, 2007; Penguin, 2008) / William Trevor

MPH Breakfast Club with ... Robert RAYMER

2008-07-17T05:12:00.000-07:00

“COFFEE, CURRY PUFFS AND BOOKS:
WHAT A TANTALISING COMBINATION!”

The 15th MPH Breakfast Club on Saturday, July 26, 2008, at 11.00a.m. to 12.30p.m., will be featuring short-story writer Robert Raymer, the author of Lovers and Strangers Revisited (MPH Publishing, 2008). In this collection of 17 stories, Kuching-based Raymer portrays the traditional in modernity, the unexpected in relationships both familiar and strange, and the recurring theme of race even as contemporary Malaysia finds ways to understand its multicultural milieu.

In the title story, a selfish writer gets more than he bargained for when former lovers haunt him in more ways than one. In another story, a man’s loneliness turns into obsession when he shares a taxi ride with a Malay woman. A Clark Gable lookalike is a barrister wannabe with a shocking secret and gossipy neighbours reveal more about themselves than the man who commits suicide. Elsewhere, expats cross the border to Had Yai to experience a good bargain in the Thai flesh trade before going home to their wives in America.

In this republished edition of Lovers and Strangers Revisited, Raymer’s snapshots of scenes from various walks of life provide an insider-outsider view on love, family and culture, and urges a second look at ourselves in the mirror of self-awareness.

Eric Forbes will be introducing Robert Raymer while Tan May Lee will be moderating the session.

Date July 26, 2008 (Saturday)
Time 11.00a.m.-12.30p.m.
Venue MPH Bangsar Village II Lot 2F-1 (2nd Floor), Bangsar Village II, No. 2 Jalan Telawi 1, Bangsar Baru, 59100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Phone (603) 2287 3600

Food and refreshments will be served
All lovers of literature are most welcome

Robert Raymer will also be doing a reading at readings@seksan at 3.30p.m. on the same day. Seksan Design is at No. 67 Jalan Tempinis Satu, Lucky Garden, Bangsar, 59100 Kuala Lumpur

Praise for LOVERS AND STRANGERS REVISITED
‘Raymer not only writes from his own viewpoint as a foreigner and observer, but also delves into the minds of a desperate Malay woman, a young Indian girl, an adulterous Chinese couple, and an old Chinese man who survived the Japanese occupation ... He has an uncanny ability to hold a mirror up to the people of his adopted country, not as a foreigner but as one of us. His stories are full of personalities that you know—you work with them, or live next door to them, or eavesdrop on them at the kopi tiam.’ The Borneo Post

‘This account (“On Fridays”) of a crammed ride with strangers in a taxi may well stand as a metaphor of Raymer’s own experience of living among Malaysians .... He imbues each of the characters in his stories with a realistic, genuinely believable voice even as he tempers it with the valuable perspective of an observer.’ New Straits Times

‘Raymer gives a lushly and rich and multi-layered rendition of the Malaysian way of life as coloured and influenced by his own experiences from his twenty years as an expat here .... These stories are some of the few authentic portrayals of the inner workings and inner plays of the average Malaysian’s life in all of its robustness and unique cultural settings.’ The Expat

Robert Raymer was born in the U.S. and has lived in Malaysia for over 20 years. His fiction and nonfiction have been widely published. He currently lives in Kuching, Sarawak, where he teaches creative writing at Universiti Malaysia Sarawak.

ON THE COUCH WITH ... Saradha NARAYANAN

2008-07-16T20:25:00.000-07:00

The Freedom to Make the Right Choices
TAN MAY LEE speaks to a cardiologist who decided to hang up her stethoscope and write her first novel

“When people exercise their freedom to choose, most people would make a choice that directly benefits them in some way. That is human nature, after all. But when the question of ‘morality’ seeps in, that little voice inside our heads may question our choices ....”

SARADHA NARAYANAN is a cardiologist who found the experience of writing and publishing her first novel exciting. Why would a doctor hang up her stethoscope and write books? Or did her career have everything to do with coming up with the material for her book? The Freedom of Choice is published by independent publisher Melrose Books in the United Kingdom, which is another unconventional route taken by Narayanan. Here, in this interview, she reasons out the choices she has made as a writer.

What motivates you to put your pen to paper?
As far back as I can remember, I have always wanted to write. As a teenager, I used to dabble in poetry—silly schoolgirl stuff full of anger and angst. Then I would read some beautiful lyrical verse—Tagore, Wordsworth or Tennyson, and think “Why can’t I write like that?” When I finally decided to hang up my stethoscope I found that I had the time to really read. And the more I read, the more I was motivated to write. There were all these voices in my head, clamouring to be heard—I just had to let them out on paper.

What do you think is your biggest achievement as a writer so far?
When I finished writing the first draft of my novel, I felt this supreme sense of achievement—I felt like flying.

What does the freedom of choice mean to you?
We are confronted with an infinite variety of choices everyday, so much so that deciding what to eat for lunch can prove daunting! But on a more serious note, the freedom of choice I’m referring to applies to choices we make in life—the freedom to choose our career paths, our religious beliefs, a life partner or to have a baby, for instance. But this freedom of choice comes with a certain responsibility; you have to bear the consequences of your choice even if that choice turns out to be wrong. And you also have to remember that what is right for you may not necessarily be right for someone else. I have tried to explore some of these issues in the novel.

What happens when the freedom of choice leads to destruction or tragedy?
That’s a risk we all have to take. When people exercise their freedom to choose, most people would make a choice that directly benefits them in some way. That is human nature, after all. But when the question of ‘morality’ seeps in, that little voice inside our heads may question our choices: “Am I making the right ‘moral’ decision under the circumstances?” And even if you make the right choice in a situation, this may not be the right choice for your spouse, child, parent or work colleague. This could lead to destruction or tragedy. I am sure we have all made some choices we regret.

Why did you decide to go with Melrose Books?
I travel quite frequently to the UK and subscribe regularly to two magazines, namely Writer’s Forum and Writing Magazine. Independent publishers like Melrose Books advertise regularly in these magazines and the name caught my eye. Most big-time, established publishing houses will not accept manuscripts from first-time authors unless they are submitted through a literary agent. And if you send an unsolicited manuscript it will be binned immediately. Melrose, on the other hand, welcomes submissions from first-time authors and they do not limit their publishing to any one genre. They do fiction and nonfiction and I am told they get submissions from all over the world, especially Australia and New Zealand!

How has your background as a doctor influenced your writing?
Quite a bit actually. My novel deals with organ transplant (more specifically, kidney transplant), an issue that is quite close to my heart. There is a fair bit of medical mumbo-jumbo in the novel, but I have tried to keep it simple and straightforward. More importantly, I wanted to send out the message that donating one of your kidneys should not put you under any additional risk or reduce your life expectancy.

How difficult was it to capture the backdrop of modern KL?
Not difficult at all. I have lived in Kuala Lumpur and Petaling Jaya since the age of 14 and am very familiar with the landscape. I also wanted readers in the UK and elsewhere to know that KL is a thriving, modern metropolis with high-tech tertiary-level hospitals that offer advanced medical care. And that we have shopping malls, cafés and Starbucks at every corner! Malaysian readers, I hope, will be able to read the book and say, “Oh yes, I know that place!”

Which do you think is more important: plot or characters? Who are your literary influences?
Plot and characters go hand in hand. Plot keeps the reader turning the pages, while characters make you remember the story after you have finished reading it. Take Sherlock Holmes, for instance: Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories consist of highly imaginative plots, but we remember them because of the central character—Sherlock Holmes. Similarly, Agatha Christie is remembered to this day because of Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple. As for contemporary writers, I admire Jodi Picoult who has an uncanny knack for coming up with the most unusual plots—especially those that pose difficult moral choices. I have also enjoyed reading Camilla Gibb, Kiran Desai and Romesh Gunesekera.

What’s the funniest thing you have done in the name of research?
I had to drive to Kuala Kubu Baru and make sure there wasn’t really a Wong Maternity Centre there. I didn’t want to be slapped with a lawsuit! However, when I cooked up the cell-phone numbers, I took a chance. I hope they do not belong to any well-known private investigator!

What’s on your coffee table?
A large bowl of potpouri and some candle-holders!

How necessary is it for Malaysian writers to go overseas to get credible recognition?
In 2006, I co-authored a collection of short stories entitled Snapshots! which was published in Malaysia. We had trouble marketing it even in Singapore. If you want international recognition, I do believe you have to go overseas. In the UK, they have the whole set-up—qualified and experienced editors, literary agents and several publishing houses as well as a ready, voracious, ‘reading’ market. The only problem is penetrating this ‘stone wall’—how do you get your writing accepted and then published? For this you need talent, skill, persistence and a large dose of luck! Rani Manicka, Tash Aw and Tan Twan Eng were all published overseas and have become highly-acclaimed authors.

When you imagine yourself being exactly where you want to be as a writer, what do you see? How will you get there?
I don’t think I can imagine exactly where I want to be as a writer. I do know that I have a lot more to learn when it comes to learning the craft of writing, but I intend to continue writing nevertheless. I am toying with some ideas for my second novel. I would also like to try writing in different genres—children’s stories, travel writing or poetry, for instance. How will I get there? Through hard work, I guess!

2008 Dylan Thomas Prize: Longlist

2008-07-15T03:58:00.000-07:00

THE 2008 Dylan Thomas Prize is Britain’s most lucrative literary award which promotes English-language poetry and drama as well as novels and short-story collections and is restricted to authors under the age of 30. With this prize, the spirit of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas is kept aflame. Believe it or not, the winner of the prize gets £60,000 (US$115,000). Zoë Brigley and Joe Dunthorne are both from South Wales. The inaugural 2006 Dylan Thomas Prize was won by Welsh poet Rachel Tresize for her first collection of poetry, Fresh Apples.

The longlist for the 2008 Dylan Thomas Prize is as follows:

Novels
1. God’s Own Country (Viking, 2008) / Ross Raisin
2. Submarine (Hamish Hamilton, 2008) / Joe Dunthorne
3. Blood Kin (Atlantic, 2007) / Ceridwen Dovey
4. The Orientalist and the Ghost (Doubleday, 2008) / Susan Barker
5. Ishq and Mushq (Doubleday, 2007) / Priya Basil
6. Blackmoor (Simon and Schuster, 2008) / Edward Hogan
7. Zoology (Vinatge, 2007) / Ben Dolnick
8. Oystercatchers (Fourth Estate, 2007) / Susan Fletcher
9. Satsuma Sun-mover (Lazy Gramophone, 2006) / Adam Green

Stories
10. Sons and Other Flammable Objects (Grove, 2007) / Porochistra Khakpour
11. The Boat (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008) / Nam Le
12. St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves (Alfred A. Knopf, 2006) / Karen Russell
13. Children of the Revolution (Jonathan Cape, 2007) / Dinaw Mengestu

Poetry
14. There is an Anger that Moves (Carcanet, 2007) / Kei Miller
15. Trouble Came to the Turnip (Carcanet, 2006) / Caroline Bird
16. The Secret (Bloodaxe, 2007) / Zoë Brigley

A six-book shortlist will be announced in September 2008 and the winner will be declared in November 2008

Clare WIGFALL wins the 2008 BBC National Short Story Award

2008-07-14T05:06:00.000-07:00

CLARE WIGFALL has been declared the winner of the 2008 BBC National Short Story Award, with Jane Gardam the runner-up. Wigfall will receive £15,000—the largest award in the world for a single short story—for her story “The Numbers” from her début collection, The Loudest Sound and Nothing (Faber and Faber, 2007), a collection of disturbing and darkly provocative stories. (“The Numbers” is the first story in the collection.) This collection was recently longlisted for the 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. Two-time Whitbread Prize-winner Gardam won for her short story, “The People on Privilege Hill,” from a collection of the same name. The other writers on the shortlist include Adam Thorpe (“The Names”), Richard Beard (“Guidelines for Measures to Cope with Disgraceful and Other Events”) and Erin Soros (“Surge”).

According to the chair of the judging panel, broadcaster and writer Martha Kearnsey, “It’s exciting that a relatively unknown voice, in fact the youngest writer on our shortlist, has distinguished herself amongst some very well-known authors as a leading talent in the world of storytelling. Clare’s evocation of superstition and frustrated lives on a remote Scottish island is an act of historical ventriloquism. She shows just what the short story can achieve, conjuring up a whole world in microcosm. The strength of our shortlist ranging from the gothic to the comic demonstrates that the short story is alive and well, the perfect art form for a time-hungry age.”

Heartiest congratulations, Clare!

IF ONLY BOOKS COULD TALK

2008-07-13T17:59:00.000-07:00

Best-selling Malaysian author LYDIA TEH imagines what books would say to us if only they could speak their mind

WE BOOKS like to be owned by book lovers who treat us with deference, as if we’re better than cold hard cash. They wrap our covers in plastic to preserve our looks. They flip our pages gently. Fastidious owners go the length by reading our pages with the covers partially opened like a deep valley so that our spine won’t be unduly creased.

Alas, these people are as rare as hen’s teeth. They’re really hard to find. Instead we have to put up with a host of ugly readers with weird habits. The most common complaint we have against you people is how you mark the page. If you use bookmarks, we’re happy. Instead you choose to fold over the corner of a page so that it resembles a dog’s ear. This isn’t a complimentary look. It’s the equivalent of you wearing a shirt with the collar turned in. Not very nice, is it?

We’d rather you use something flat to mark the page instead. If you would just apply those grey cells a little, you’ll find many handy things to use if no bookmark is available. A name card, a supermarket receipt, a parking ticket, a piece of tissue paper, a dollar note or even a leaflet from the loan shark is as good as a conventional bookmark.

Some of you have the habit of marking the page by placing us with our covers splayed out like a tent. That’s a sure way of giving our spine more wrinkles, not to mention the unsightly bulge we acquire if placed in this position for a considerable period of time. Trust us, the pregnant look has never and will never be fashionable in bookdom.

We salute you for being great multi-taskers. You can do two or more things simultaneously with aplomb, like reading while eating. Though we admire the way you place equal emphasis on sustenance for both body and mind, we implore you to be careful when indulging in this calisthenics. While pastry flakes and cake and biscuit crumbs can be easily dusted off, messy stuff such as spaghetti, curry noodles and wantan mee will stain us with splashes of orange, red and black. We’re not blank canvases to be painted on.

Some of you like to bring us into the bathroom for a relaxing read while you soak in the bathtub. That’s fine by us as long as you don’t get us wet and cause our pages to warp. The toilet is another thing altogether. For us to be subjected to the stink and noise of bowel movement is degrading. What’s worse is that we run the risk of contamination when you flush without closing the toilet cover. We are exposed to germs from the spray and your unwashed hands. We suspect that hygiene is not a word in your vocabulary.

Here’s another pet peeve, though not as common as the earlier ones. The culprits are those of you who read in public places such as bookstores, aeroplanes or trains. When your eyes get tired, you want to catch forty winks between pages. Sleeping with the mouth wide open is a reflex action with many of you and is hazardous for two reasons. A snoring, gaping mouth is a blow to self-dignity even if you happen to be a beauty queen or a gorgeous hunk. Secondly, flies could easily buzz into your open orifice. The best thing to do under the circumstances is for you to open up our covers and spread us like a tent over your face. Besides providing you with self-dignity and preserving your health from foraging insects, we also shield your eyes from the glare of bright lights. Indeed we exist not just for the sole purpose of enriching the human mind. What is your complaint then, you ask. Well, have you come eyeball-to-eyeball with a garlic chomper or a halitosis sufferer? There’s your answer.

One last gripe and we’re done. When we are new, sometimes our pages tend to stick together. This is especially true for thinner quality grades such as bible paper which is used for printing bibles and dictionaries. To counter the stickiness issue, you guys dab your finger with saliva before turning over the page. This bit of saliva is better than drool which drips out of sleepy heads but be forewarned that our pages can be used to get DNA evidence should you be facing paternity suits or criminal cases. Saliva is a convenient source of DNA and its reliability can be counted on for up to 30 days if stored in cool temperature. Thumb at your own risk.

Though we are faced with all these pet peeves, we still love mankind. It is for you that we exist, not for those detestable silverfish which eat us up.

LYDIA TEH is the best-selling author of Honk! If You’re Malaysian and Life’s Like That

Reproduced from the July-September 2008 issue of Quill

Story Collections

2008-07-12T03:46:00.000-07:00

IN KEEPING WITH this season of short stories, here are several collections that are worthy of your bookshelf space.

1. Say You’re One of Them (Little, Brown, 2008) / Uwem Akpan
2. The O. Henry Prize Stories 2008 (Originally published in hardcover in the U.S. by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2007) (Anchor Books/Random House, 2008) / Laura Furman (ed.)
3. Walk the Blue Fields (Grove/Black Cat, 2008) / Claire Keegan
4. Unaccustomed Earth (Alfred A. Knopf/Bloomsbury, 2008) / Jhumpa Lahiri
5. The Complete Stories (Vintage, 2008) / David Malouf
6. Cheating at Canasta (Viking, 2007; Penguin, 2008) / William Trevor

BOOK REVIEW Glimpses

2008-07-11T18:14:00.000-07:00

More from the Mistress of Anecdotes
AMIR MUHAMMAD enjoys Adibah Amin’s new collection of pithy observations about Malaysian life, Glimpses

IF YOU ARE a Malaysian who is picking up this book, chances are you will be familiar with Adibah Amin’s recently reissued As I Was Passing and As I Was Passing II, first published as newspaper columns in the 1970s. If so, you will certainly need no further encouragement—from me or anyone else—to get your grubby mitts on Glimpses.

The articles here were written more than a decade after As I Was Passing, and although Adibah’s inimitable wit and warmth continue to shine through, there are greater hints that things are not going so well with the Malaysian project.

The multicultural ease of Malaysians as recorded in As I Was Passing seems to be under threat, due to increasingly entrenched communal sentiments. Racial jokes that used to be taken in good fun by one and all now have a darker undertow. (It has been said that Malaysians are becoming more sensitive, but the opposite is also true: we are becoming more insensitive.)

What has happened in the meantime? Perhaps the capitalist short cuts of the 1980s put too much emphasis on physical monuments, brushing aside intangible but arguably more important things. But once we have bolted out the door, is it still possible to go back and retrieve what we have forgotten?

It is a measure of Adibah’s moral strength that she neither sweeps these problems under the carpet nor seeks escape into an unreconstructed nostalgia based on an idyllic past. Although she notes that Malaysians seem to be getting further apart (and drawn together mainly on food-laden occasions such as festive holidays) she is well aware of the structural inequalities that have given rise to this. These inequalities—and attendant insensitivities—are the root cause of the polarisation that she laments.

Adibah is able to put herself into the footwear—be it the leather sandals, terompah (clogs) or humble selipar Jepun (Japanese slippers)—of others. This is not as easy an accomplishment as it sounds, especially in a society where you can get very far by playing your racial or religious card. A demagogue would see the rights and even basic existence of the Other as a threat. She is the opposite of a demagogue.

The level of empathy Adibah displays could only have come about through a keen intelligence, instinctive curiosity and a firm sense of fair play. Her pride in our imagined community isn’t of the obnoxious bragging variety; we all know that bragging is a sign of insecurity, anyway. She continues to have hope because she has met some very good people, and knows that there are many more out there. And goodness has certainly never been the monopoly of any particular group of people.

To pick just one seemingly innocuous example: Adibah’s essay on some neighbours she has known sneaks in the word ‘temples,’ the sole indication that the family she’s speaking of must be from a different faith. Nowadays, when temples (or mosques, or churches) became part of public discussion, they would just as likely become signifiers in the contested terrain of ‘our rights’ versus ‘their rights.’ And how many of us now would fail to foreground a person’s creed the moment we refer to him or her? But she concentrates, with sly wit, on the more important qualities (such as the simple ability to return borrowed items!) that a good neighbour should possess.

A particularly striking essay, one of the longest here, is on the implications of Merdeka. Read in the context of our national orgy of self-congratulation (which often became the exclusive channel for the political elite to promote and perpetuate its hegemonic legacy), it shines like a star in a fog-filled sky. How many writers could point out that there are many other political fighters, particularly of the leftist variety, that have been forgotten? Or to mention the perception (perhaps silenced now) that our Independence was a relatively painless and contingent one compared to what our neighbours can boast of? Or, perhaps more importantly, to listen to what the young, seemingly apolitical, voices have to say without hectoring them into submission? That she can accomplish all this and more, while never seeming to have an axe to grind, is testament enough to her artistry.

Part of this artistry is the ability to render ideas in concrete, personal terms. In recognising the integrity of the whistle-blowing schoolgirl in the case of the leaked exam papers, Adibah invites us to ponder the bigger implications of living in a time when we often ‘close one eye’ to corruption. And her unusually intimate account of the breakdown of a relationship due to the man’s surprising (to the woman) reliance on patriarchal power tropes strikes you in the heart. Self-deprecating but no pushover, she knows when something’s amiss.

Fifty years after our much-vaunted Merdeka, there are precious few writers who have managed to achieve the pan-national appeal of Lat, P. Ramlee or Sudirman. Adibah would seem to be the fittest candidate: her unassuming demeanour, transparent prose and disarming humour are for keeps.

Humour, oh yes! Although this introduction is sadly free of them, the book itself is full of jokes, trust me. I laughed many times—and so will you, unless you are a really uptight type, in which case you are better off reading one of those ‘How to be a millionaire or die trying’ things that are abundant in bookshops.

Adibah’s humour is often pointed but never cynical. If a cynic is one who knows “the price of everything and the value of nothing” (who said this? what do I look like, the Google page?) then she is empathically not a cynic. She ain’t too impressed by price tags, but she knows what truly matters—and even if you were broke, her “love don’t cost a thing” (to quote a slightly different Western icon).

If we had more neighbours like Adibah, none of us will ever think of moving away.

AMIR MUHAMMAD is a writer and independent movie-maker. His previous movies include the banned documentaries Lelaki Komunis Terakhir (The Last Communist) and Apa Khabar Orang Kampung (Village People Radio Show). He heads his own publishing company, Matahari Books, and has published two best-selling titles so far: Malaysian Politicians Say the Darndest Things: Volume 1 (2007) and New Malaysian Essays 1 (2008).

Midnight's Children wins the Best of the Bookers

2008-07-10T05:57:00.000-07:00

IT’S Midnight’s Children again! Salman Rushdie’s magical treasure trove of a novel was today crowned the Best of the Bookers. The shortlist of six novels was selected by biographer, novelist and critic Victoria Glendinning, writer and broadcaster Mariella Frostrup and John Mullan, Professor of English at University College, London. The winner was decided by public voting. Midnight’s Children won with 36 per cent of the votes. Midnight’s Children won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1981. It was then chosen as the Booker of the Bookers in 1993 to celebrate 23 years of the prize. With this win, Rushdie has scored a hattrick!

“Midnight’s Children is still a wonderful, buoyantly self-delighted novel, where east and west—Sheherazade and Tristram Shandy—meet as they never met before.” John Mullan