Bibliobibuli

Farish in the Madrasahs

2009-11-04T10:29:00.002+08:00

Congratulations to Farish Noor who this week launches his new book Qur'an and Cricket : Travels Through the Madrasahs of Asia and Other Stories at Silverfish.

Catch the event at 7.00pm on Friday, 6th November, 2009 at Silverfish Books, 58-1 Jalan Telawi, Bangsar Baru, Kuala Lumpur. Tel: 448 449 37 Email: info@silverfishbooks.com. Admission: Free

Here is the blurb :

Farish A Noor, academic, activist, traveller extraordinaire, visits, lives and interviews students (and others) in 'jihad factory' madrasahs (Islamic seminaries) from Patani to Pakistan and from Kashmir to Cairo, and comes away dazed and confused. In attempting to make sense of it all, he ends up confronting his own demons and nightmares.

and a taster from the book :

However, in the course of the same research I have also visited some rather dodgy institutions that can hardly be called madrasahs. Once in Pakistan I had to interview some students while in the corner of the room played a videotape of the gruesome murder and decapitation of the American journalist Daniel Pearl. The boys I was speaking to were between seven to ten years of age, and were smiling and laughing -- while others lay asleep. I tried to look away as long as I could, resisting the urge to puke.

Farish is one of my favourite writers. I really value his intelligence, his calm rationality and careful research.

Silverfish was kind enough to send me a copy, and I am really looking forward to reading it.

Au Reveals All!

2009-11-03T11:07:00.010+08:00

Au, hero of Katz Tales, speaks. As Au’s language is too sophisticated for some audiences, he allows his personal servant Ellen Whyte to write the columns and the book in her own way.

However, as a rare treat, Au types his own message for Bibliobuli :

Helo reederz. i dont do intervoows ewesualy but as Sharon sends homidge often i haf graceeousli agreed to tak two yoo. And too tipe it myself. There is no need to fank me; just send a rost chikkin.

Sharon aksed me to shair my eksperiences as a faymus kat. Wel, what kan i say? i have always been a top kat so i am used to kontinual adorasyun.

Anyone hoo nos me, howevver, wil tel yoo i am a verry low-key kat. i have just too devoted servants, wun male and wun feemale. They make shure the big grey boks in the kitshun is stakked with treets and the kat biscuit barrel is all ways ful. Wen they perform reely wel i alow them to squizle my chin or play a game. Sum strikter kats wud say i spoil them but what kan i say, i am a just a verry kind kat by nature.

Wen the feemale began witing abowt me, i wuz in two mines.

On the wun paw i pweffer to keep a low pwofile becuz it makes it eazier to katch mice. Also, i don like peeple fawning al over me. i no my beauyooti, wit and grasiousness ar a magnet for the rabble, but al that hommage kan git verry tiring verry quikly.

However, the feemale promissed me that her storees wud enshoor a perminent flow of treetz. She also promissed i wud have to make no pershunal apearanses. Plus, she pointed owt that not evriwun nos what it is like to live with sumone as wunderfool as me. This final point perswayded me.

What the feemale had not mensioned wur the foto shoots.

I wuz verry patient wen she tuk my purrtrait for the buk cuvur but i objekt to those kandid pitshures she splashes al over the place withowt eeven asking my permizion. i meen, how wud yoo feel if sumone fotograffed yoo sleepin and eksposed yoor prozpiroos tummy to the nasion? i am not a poleetiseeyon!

But the feemale has been verry good abowt keeping my fans away. Wen they visit i luk at dem and deeside if they ar worthy of an audienze. Okkasionaly, if their hands ar kleen and they ar properli respektful, i wil alow them to stroke me. i beleef wun must enkorage wuns infeerreeors in everry way, eeven if it meenz sum pershunal sakrifice.

Allso, she has kept me properli suplied with treetz. Wich reminds me: i havent had wun in abowt 20 minootes. Before i go and poot in my order, i wud like to say wun thing: buy the buk! Not only is it filed with wunnerful stories al abowt me but 10% of the feemale’s share wil go to help owt kitties hoo ar living withowt the benefit of pershunal servants.

Bye now. I haf too eet a treet.

Katz Tales, Living Under The Velvet Paw is out in bookshops now. Price RM28 ISBN: 978-967-3035-64-9. For a free sneak peak and free sample story, visit http://www.lepak.com/katztalesbook.html

Two Books for Ellen

2009-11-03T10:54:00.003+08:00

One of our featured authors at Readings@Seksan last Saturday has not just one but two titles newly released - both of them with different publishers, and both of them blurbed by me! (Professional!)

Ellen Whyte is someone I wanted very much to meet when I read her Katz Tales columns in The Star and realised that she was as feline crazy as me. And anyone doing PR on behalf of our furry friends, in a country where pets are too often neglected and abandoned, can only be a good thing.

I'm really delighted that she now has out Katz Tales : Under the Velvet Paw (anyone who has been owned by a cat will really appreciate the title!)

To quote myself on the back cover :

Ellen Whyte has the uncanny ability to think herself into the mind of a cat, and writes with great charm while managing to imparting a great deal of practical information. Scoop, Au and Target deserve to be Malaysia's first feline superstars.

I think my words may have gone to Au's head, as you will see later.

The second book Ellen has out is a compilation of her Logomania columns for The Star's Mind Our English page.

Logomania : Where Common Phrases Come From and How to Use Them is published by MPH. And to - ahem - quote myself again :

Logomania is a fascinating and very enjoyable exploration of some of the quirkier phrases in the English language and of the historical circumstances and cultural practices that gave rise to them. Ellen Whyte also provides plenty of examples of the expressions in use so you can comfortably slip these new expressions into everyday conversation.

I have learned a lot about my own language that I didn't know before, and remain fascinated about how the words we use are actually artefacts.

Check out some more of her very readable columns here and here.

Her blog is also a very enjoyable read, and she put up a very useful piece after the publishing symposium we attended in Singapore last week on how to put stuff online without giving your content away. (A problem we are both concerned about.)

Now then, just because I feel naughty, thought I'd put up a pic I took of Ellen and a blow-up doll in Singapore last week. Ellen is the one on the left.

Marshall Cavendish Warehouse Sale

2009-11-03T07:00:00.004+08:00

Be warned - there's yet another warehouse sale going on! This time it is publishers Marshall Cavendish who are heavily discounting stock - up to 80% off - so this is definitely worth checking out. Click the poster up to full size to see the map.

Readings at a New Seksan's

2009-11-02T17:41:00.007+08:00

Our Saturday's Readings@Seksan was quite a different event because of the location - Seksan's beautiful new place 48, Jalan Tenggirri - part personal gallery, part guesthouse ... and completed only the day before, so our event was its christening.

Seksan's spaces are magical, and all the more so for their apparent simplicity and use of recycled and salvaged materials. We were gawping at the distressed wooden doors (from an old school building?), the bare brickwork, the lampshade made of cat food tins (and the others of yoghurt bottles and plastic cake trays), the landscaping with wild plants, and marvelling at how relaxed and happy and creative the place makes you feel.

The guesthouse will be open soon for bookings, and I reckon it would be a perfect place for a writing retreat.

I was a bit worried about our audience finding us, but we really did have a bumper crowd on Saturday. If I had any problem at all it was in trying to decide how we should use the space around the pool - terraces, patios and dining area. Which way should we face, where should the audience be? There was sun and rain to factor in too, because we got extremes of both that afternoon. I'm not sure I got it right.

Anyway, here are the stars of the afternoon :

Seksan himself requested that Tan May Lee read first, because he so wanted to hear the story about the Muslim lesbian women. The piece which appears in the Body2Body collection is sizzling hot and beautifully written and she read a very moving passage from it.

May Lee, incidentally, works for MPH and is the editor of Quill magazine, and she was kind enough to bring along some free copies for us.

Ellen Whyte read us an extract from her new book Katz Tales : Living Under the Velvet Paw - a great story which very nicely illustrates the duplicitous ways of cats. I think all cat lovers in the audience could really relate to it. (More about Ellen coming up in another post!)

I've blogged about Haslina Usman's mission to make sure that the works of her late father, former laureate Usman Awang, are not forgotten and I was so happy to have her at Readings. she roped me into reading the English version of a poem of his very powerful poem (Bunga Popi) about poppies :

From blood, from pus that
rots in the soil
from skeletons that have lost
their lives
the result of war maniacs
who kill love,
the red flowers bloom beautifully,
requesting to be adored.

(More about the poem here.) I also read an extract from the very dramatic last chapter of Scattered Bones (the English translation of Tulang2 Berserahkan) while Haslina read a piece from Turunnya Sebuah Bendera (The Flag Comes Down?).

Next year Haslina is organising a restaging of her father's classic play Uda dan Dara (described as the Malay Romeo and Juliet) and I hope to invite her back then.

This young lady is Afi Momo - a science student by day and a poet every other minute. She made her debut at the 4th KL Poetry Slam and has performed in various events around KL and also in Singapore at the Lit Up Festival. She has published her own chapbook Paper Raper, and read us five poems from it. my favourite was entitled how to be A Pair of High Heels.

Her friends came along to support her and to pass out some copies of a group poetry zine. I was most impressed by their work and plan to invite the other members of Kata.Mata to appear next month.

Here's children's author Rebecca Loke with her son Ethan, who inspired her new book Great-Grandma's Hair Loss Remedy. Ethan read for his mum and was quite superb. (And hair or no hair, I reckon this young man is going to be breaking some hearts before long!)

Julya Oui is a freelance scriptwriter who also writes short stories, novels and poetry. she's been publsihed in various anthologies and magazines, and has a short horror story collection out soon. She also blogs here.

She read us a short horror story and the weather decided to provide the sound effects, giving us peels of thunder and flashes of lightning to accompany the words. (This of course gave new meaning to the expression, flash fiction!).

She also read us a piece from her story Friends Of Everyone which is in the Body2Body collection.

Finally, Moja Amin and Izza Izelan (both education students at University Teknologi MARA) took to the mic to give us a taste of a play that the group they belong to (Ethos! Society) have in production. It was a short dialogue debating the nature of love.

You can read more about the play here, and I was quite amazed to discover that one of my beautiful nieces, Wan Nadrah Yusoff, plays one of the leads. Small world. (And I have no excuse not to go to see it now!)

Before and after the event and during the break there was a lot of selling going on - we had a veritable arty pasar malam.

Yvonne Foong had recruited a whole team of young friends to help her sell tee-shirts, Steven V-L Lee's beautiful photographic books which he had donated, tee -shirts, her own book, and cupcakes. All to raise funds for the operation to save her sight.

Umapagan Ampikaipakan donated a whole pile of new books that people could help themselves to for free.

Thanks a lot to everyone who came and everyone who read. Biggest thanks too to Seksan for letting us launch the wonderful space. Thanks to Haslina for baking us a very special kueh lapis! Thanks too to Saras for helping to clear up. And again to Shahril Nizam for the blog poster.

I thank Tommy Ng for all the photos above except for the one of Haslina and myself which I stole from Azwan's Facebook page. (Do check out the rest here.) There are more lovely photos of the event showing more of the audience and the venue on on Leon Wing's and Yvonne's Foong's Facebook pages too.

Ioannis at Borders

2009-11-02T11:22:00.002+08:00

You can catch up with author Ioannis Gatsiounis at Borders, The Curve between 3-4pm this Saturday, where he will be signing copies of his new collection of short fiction Velvet and Cinder Blocks.

Singaporean Interlude

2009-10-30T22:53:00.005+08:00

Back in the 80's, I used to take a bus down to Singapore so that I could get my fix of cheap second hand books at a row of tumbledown shops in Bras Basah road.

The area was redeveloped (as everywhere in Singapore tended to be) and the shops disappeared. It was only on this trip that I caught up with the booksellers again - in the (aptly named) Bras Basah Complex on Bain Street and thanks to Ellen Whyte who dragged me there during our symposium lunch-break on Thursday. The pictures are of Knowledge Book Centre on the third level of the complex - just one of several bookshops here, and well worth a visit when you are down in Lion City.

(I've lots to post about the symposium over the next week or so.)

Rebecca for Readings Too!

2009-10-30T17:14:00.003+08:00

Oops! One of my readers I accidentally left off my list for tomorrow's Readings@Seksan's is children's author, Rebecca Loke who will be introducing us to her new book Great-Grandma's Hair Loss Remedy.

The book was inspired by Rebecca's son, Ethan, who has alopecia universalis - a condition which leads to the loss of hair, not only on the head but all over the body, including the eyebrows and the eyelashes.

As Rebecca notes on the book cover, there is meagre understanding of the condition in the community at large. She says in the foreword :

At times when Ethan goes out without covering his head, people stare at him. Some even do a double-take. Some tease and call him botak-head. Others assume he has cancewre and offer words of comfort. A few people have asked 'What did you do to make your head so smooth?'

Hopefully the story about an 8 year old called James will make folks more aware of the issues. The book is the first in a planned series called Children’s Concerns.

Rebecca and her son were featured in The Straits Times of Singapore last month, and you can read the piece here.

So What Have You Been Reading?

2009-10-27T10:07:00.003+08:00

I'm off to the Publishing Symposium at the Singapore Writers festival and most probably away from this blog till Friday. Expect some updates after that of stuff I hope will be particularly relevant to local writers.

So while I'm gone, this is your space. What have you read recently? Any good?

Non-fiction and short stories are still my reads of choice at the moment. I finished Madness : A Bipolar Life by Marya Hornbacher very moving memoir of life with the illness - very well written, often harrowing but ultimately hopeful. A must-read if you know people who are bipolar and a book to put beside Kay Redfield Jamison's An Unquiet Mind. (I found my very cheap copy at Big Bookshop, and you can read excerpts from the book here.)

I read most of Gerrie Lim's In Lust We Trust : Adventures in Adult Cinema, at the hairdressers yesterday. Quite an eye-popping read (How does a nice Singaporean boy get mixed up in this? What actually goes on behind the scenes at the filming of porno movies - well aren't you also curious?), insightful and intelligent. (Bought by copy from Times bookstore.)

And now I'm toying with what to put in my bag to take to Singapore. Might give Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book a chance since it's almost halloween.

What Made Junot Diaz a Writer

2009-10-27T10:00:00.001+08:00

... in my view a writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway. Wasn't until that night when I was faced with all those lousy pages that I realized, really realized, what it was exactly that I am.

Do read this very inspiring (and remarkably humble) account of how Pulitzer prize winning author Junot Diaz came to the realisation that he was a writer in O, the Oprah Magazine.

Faith and Fiction

2009-10-27T00:47:00.004+08:00

Here in the early part of the twenty-first century, religious faith seems to have become increasingly prominent in world and cultural affairs. And this change in the salience of religious faith raises several questions, I think, for the art of the novel. If we think of fiction as “make believe” and religion as “must believe,” how might novelists reconcile the ambiguities and uncertainties of their craft with an attempt to express or characterize religious faith? Is what is meant by religious truth the same as artistic truth? And if these truths are different—and perhaps they are profoundly different—how might a novelist who hopes in some way to characterize or advance the cause of religious faith serve two masters?

says Albert Mobilio in conversation about Faith and Fiction with other authors at the 2009 PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature. You can listen to this very interesting discussion here. (And there is much else worth browsing on the website.)

The Challenge Ahead

2009-10-27T00:40:00.004+08:00

The development of serious literature in Malaysia is inhibited because the level of discussion in society is not high enough. In general, we are not a reading society. ...

Malaysia's new literary laureate is interviewed again, this time by Andrew Sia in Starmag.

Readings October

2009-10-26T07:21:00.000+08:00

Catch our next monthly writers event :

Date: 31st October, 2009
Time: 3.30pm
Place: Sekeping Tenggiri, 48, Jalan Tenggiri, Taman Bukit Pantai, Bangsar, 49000 KL

The readers for this month are :

Haslina Usman
Afi Momo
Tan May Lee
Julya Oui
Ellen Whyte
Fadli Moja Amin

Yvonne Foong will also be along to sell copies of her own books, as well as Steven VS Lee's beautiful books of photography, her t-shirts and (best of all, I think) cupcakes, to raise money for her surgery.

Admission free and everyone very welcome. Please pass on the invitation to anyone else you think might be interested.

Note the new venue!!!

(For enquiries contact Sharon 017-2644956, sharonbakar@yahoo.com)

Thanks very much to Shahril Nizam for the poster.

Banning Bad for Book Business

2009-10-25T16:35:00.007+08:00

The banned books issue is (hurray) the cover story in Starmag today, and there is a writeup about the Right to Read event, jointly organised by Sisters in islam and Centre for Independent Journalism (CIJ).

The article highlights the confusion that surrounds the banning of books which all to frequently causes publishers to lose money and deprives the public of information.

Suaram chairperson K. Arumugam describes how his book on the Kampung Medan clashes in Kuala Lumpur was banned after he had spent RM10,000 on the printing, although he personally was not informed of the decision and the Home Ministry could not possibly have read the book since it was only published in Tamil. He says :

Banning a book which documents history is wrong as it denies me the right to record history ... I brought out a rational view of what occurred and what the government should do to correct the situation (in Kg Medan). Sue me in court (for defamation) or write another book to prove me wrong. I have a right to express myself the way I want to. You can’t take that away from me.

Ezra Mohd Zaid of ZI Publications was also in a quandary. It bought the translation rights to Irshad Manji’s The Trouble with Islam Today and had started the process of getting it translated. Then the book appeared on a banned books list in the local newspapers! says Ezra :

Theoretically, we can proceed with a Bahasa Malaysia version. But can we get any guarantee, as a business that has pumped money into the translation project, that the BM edition won’t be banned as well?

Masjaliza (of SIS) says that the Home Ministry officials also confiscate books that are not banned:

Last November, they went to a bookstore in Kota Baru to take copies of books which are actually not banned, such as Asian Renaissance by Anwar Ibrahim, Two Faces by Dr Syed Husin Ali, 13 Mei: Dokumen-dokumen Deklasifikasi Tentang Rusuhan 1969 Malaysia (May 13: Declassification of Documents About the Riots in 1969) by Dr Kua Kia Soong and Keganasan, Penipuan & Internet (Violence, Fraud and the Internet) by Hishamuddin Rais. ... According to the law, Home Ministry officials need to account for the books they take from a bookstore. But who pays for the books? Is it a loss you have to absorb?

It is, of course a national scandal. (One of only too many in the country. *Sigh) It's more Kafka than Kafka.

Tai reports that :

When contacted by StarMag, officials at the Home Ministry declined to comment.

No surprise there. They never ever do!

The article mentions the Manuscripts Don't Burn blog, which Erna Mayuni set up in 2006, but sadly stopped updating. I found myself uncomfortable as the lone voice there, especially as a foreigner (Keep head low when waiting for PR!) and decided just to blog about banned books on this blog, as I had been doing before.

It's nice to see the blog has now had a facelift and after a 2 year hiatus a couple of posts have been added. But a blog needs ongoing commitment ...

Anyway, the event was a worthwhile one. I went along on the Saturday afternoon, bought books, bought a hand-printed tee shirt which reads I Read Banned Books, and got roped in for a forum where we talked about banned books we had read. (I talked about how I seemed to have a knack for buying and reading books that later got banned.) It was cathartic and cozy, but no-one from the Home Ministry came along, of course.

Sekeping Tenggiri

2009-10-24T18:40:00.005+08:00

I hope to get the list of readers for next Saturday's Readings@Seksan confirmed and posted here by tomorrow.

Meanwhile, you might like to check out the venue. We're honoured to be invited to use Seksan's beautiful new space, part art warehouse, part guesthouse called Sekeping Tenggiri (which translates, charmingly, as "a mackerel"). The address is 48, Jalan Tenggiri, Taman Bukit Pantai, and you can see some pictures here and read an interview with Seksan about it here.

I know you need a map, so here's a link to Google.

Asian Fiction for Italy

2009-10-23T23:40:00.000+08:00

I'm very excited to hear of the launch of Italian publishing company, Metropoli d'Asia.

I met founder, Andrea Berrini, when he was in Kuala Lumpur a few months ago, scouting for fiction from the region to publish in Italy. (Some of you might have met him at Readings@Seksan where he came to check out the local talent.)

Here's the information about the new company :

... founded by Andrea Berrini, writer and essayist, in partnership with the Italian publisher Giunti Editore. The objective is to discover, translate and offer contemporary innovative writing by Asian authors to a wide public. Europe is starting to measure up to the new economic and political giants of this continent (China and India in particular, but there are others as well) and consequently with the new cultural scenes, the new schools and languages of contemporary Asia. This leads to the need to look more closely at the metropolises, cities which have undergone tremendous change in the past two decades and will change even more. Metropoli d’Asia intends to concentrate on authors living in many countries who experience their reality at first hand and on novels with urban settings; authors linked to a place, with which they have a physical and material contiguity, because they tread their streets and know their neighbourhoods and have a direct relationship with their inhabitants. The first titles, according to the editorial plan, will be published in 2009, from 14th October.

So far no Malaysian markets have been earmarked. We seem to do well on short stories, but very poorly on marketable contemporary novels. Maybe with the encouragement of a new overseas market for local writing ...?

Karim at Times

2009-10-22T13:34:00.002+08:00

Karim Raslan will appearing at Times, Pavilion KL this Sat (24th) at 3.00pm to talk about his books, Ceritalah 3 and sign copies. (My previous post about the book is here.)

Learning the Language of the Past

2009-10-21T12:16:00.007+08:00

The notebooks excited me because, for all their gaps and mysteries, they recorded, verbatim, conversations around which I could build a story. I’d have to invent the context for the conversations, and I’d have to speculate about the people who spoke the words, and I was uncertain about how appropriate it was to do that. But in the end I felt it was important to try, because this story was one that recorded an aspect of our past—shared between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians—that was hugely important. It records a moment in that shared history where mutual goodwill and generous curiosity created real understanding.

Australian novelist, Kate Grenville (shortlisted for the 2009 Booker Prize for The Secret River), writes about how the contents of two notebooks brought alive to the friendship between a young lieutenant in a newly formed penal colony at the end of the C18th, and a young aboriginal girl; and how she set about using and this material and fleshing it out with further research. She says:

As a novelist I have latitude to speculate, to add, to omit, to guess and even to invent. But I also have available to me all the richness of the historical record. In a tradition that goes back to Homer and beyond, I’ve taken events that took place in the real world and used them as the basis for a work of imagination.

(You can preview the novel, The Lieutenant on Google Books.)

There are so many more excellent articles for the various editions of Quill magazine posted up on Eric Forbes' blog, so I urge you to go have a read. Quill seems to have evolved over the past couple of years into one of the best literary magazines - anywhere!

The Curious Intimacy of Strangers

2009-10-21T12:02:00.002+08:00

The beauty of reading a book by yourself is how the author's imagination interacts with your own, in a way it doesn't if you're watching a movie. There's that curious intimacy of strangers. That's why I think this genre will survive.

Sir Salman Rushdie in an interview with Donna Seaman. The author received the Chicago Public Library Foundation Carl Sandburg Literary Award at a banquet in the Harold Washington Library on Thursday, October 15.

Singapore Writers Fest on YouTube

2009-10-20T23:25:00.001+08:00

Okay, how about a quick break for an ad?

For 2009, the Singapore Writers Festival is going UnderCovers to bring you the literary talents from Singapore, the region and the world.

The Last Books

2009-10-20T13:09:00.005+08:00

There's something deeply upsetting about the notion of someone – and one day, yourself – reaching the point where you put down Pride and Prejudice and think, well, that's the last time I'll read that. When I read a book I really love, part of the pleasure for me is the knowledge that it's not gone forever; that I'll come back to it in a couple of years' time. Recognising that a point will come where this isn't the case could well constitute the closest I've ever come to acknowledging my own mortality … Then, there's the question of which books you'd store up for a final read. I'd put Wuthering Heights in there, I think, and definitely Updike's Rabbit tetralogy, and Bruce Chatwin's On the Black Hill. If it's not too maudlin, I'd be interested to hear what you'd choose, too. Either way, I recommend Athill's Yesterday Morning heartily – whether you've read it before or not.

A bit morbid this, but Sarah Crown's post on The Guardian blog certainly struck a chord with me, as I know I'm (subconciously) working on my mental list of books I want to revisit "before it's too late".

Old friends like Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians, Carson McCuller's The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, D.H. Lawrence's The Rainbow will definitely have to be saved up for the long goodbye.

I remember an elderly British novelist telling me some time back about how he was giving away most of his most of his personal library - books he'll never read again - and just keeping the few that he would want with him. I'm sad I didn't ask him what those most precious books were.

Inspector Singh in Cambodia ... and then India!

2009-10-19T10:59:00.006+08:00

Congrats once again to the highly prolific Shamini Flint who now has a further two book deal with Little Brown, bringing the number of Asian adventures featuring Inspector Singh to five!

Singh has already annoyed the other policemen in Malaysia , Bali and Singapore . Now our favourite inspector will be flying off to the killing fields of Cambodia ...

reads the publicity info I received today :

Inspector Singh is in Cambodia – wishing he wasn't. He's been sent as an observer to the international war crimes tribunal in Phnom Penh, the latest effort by his superiors to ensure that he is anywhere except in Singapore. But for the first time the fat Sikh inspector is on the verge of losing his appetite when a key member of the tribunal is murdered in cold blood. The authorities are determined to write off the incident as a random act of violence, but Singh thinks otherwise. It isn't long before he finds himself caught up in one of the most terrible murder investigations he’s witnessed – the roots of which lie in the Cambodian killing fields… And in Book 5 he’ll be whizzing off to India ...

The Guardian says about this series that ‘It’s impossible to not warm to the sweating, dishevelled, wheezing Inspector Singh’ and the Daily Record that Singh is ‘An unconventional new crime hero who has the potential to be as compelling (and successful) as McCall Smith’s Precious Ramotswe.‘

Meanwhile the second volume of the series, A Bali Conspiracy So Foul, is hitting the stores here. It was launched at the Ubud writers' and Readers Festival, and will have another launch at the Singapore Writers Festival.

Volume 3, Inspector Singh Investigates: A Singapore School of Villainy, is due out next February.

Worth reading - Adrian Turpin in The Financial Times considers Shamini's first novel alongside other writing he feels are in the mould of Alexander McCall Smiths novels featuring Precious Rabotswe.

Su Kim in Ubud

2009-10-18T23:49:00.001+08:00

I ... took part in two panel sessions. One was entitled Wanderlust: Travelling Stories and featured Aussie outback traveller and writer Andrew McMillan and Brian Thacker, who specialises in travel off the beaten track.

In the other panel session entitled Across Genres: Identity, Family and Place, I talked about multiple identities and shared stories and identity experiences from my Peranakan and Malaysian heritage.

I was invited to do readings from my books with other selected authors at a Literary Lunch in a beautiful setting amidst emerald-green rice fields at John Hardy’s unique estate and at a panel session entitled Dangerous Women held at the magnificent Alila Hotel, which is dramatically set on a cliff overlooking forests with two narrow gorges running through the lush valley below. I must say that, apart from the attraction of meeting writers from all over the world, another pulling power of this festival has to be its ambience. The settings were superb, rich with the natural beauty of Bali.

I was stifling my feeling of sadness at not being in Ubud for the Writers and Readers Festival for the first time in three years. Then Lee Su Kim's piece in today's Starmag brought home to me just how much I missed being there and I could have cried.

I'm really glad Su Kim had such a wonderful time though and plan to make the trip next year. Meanwhile there is the Singapore Writers Festival to look forward to this month.

(BTW, I've heard a rumour that there will soon be a new international literary festival starting up in Thailand, which will be close enough for us to get to too.)

One thing Su Kim gets wrong, as do the organisers of the Singapore Writers' Fest, Shamini Flint is a Malaysian, not a Singaporean author. (Ask her! ... Though just as a bowl of yong tau foo is delicious on both sides of the causeway, apart from flag-waving, does it really matter?)

Singapore Writers Fest Pays us a Visit

2009-10-18T18:24:00.000+08:00

It is really nice to see the organisers of the Singapore Writers' Festival reaching out to Malaysian authors and book lovers. They were in town Thursday for a press conference at MPH Mid Valley.

Singaporean lawyer and award-winning author Philip Jeyaretnam (fourth from left) is the chairperson of the SWF 2009 Steering Committee)talked about the interface between Singaporean and Malaysian writers and how an exchange of readers between the two countries was very much needed. (You can read more about what he says about the festival on Eric's blog.)

Phan Ming Yen (second from left, above) Assistant General Manager of The Arts House, gave an overview of the festival, beginning with the history. He talked about the richness of the literature coming from the region (some of it works in translation) and how it deserves to be better known worldwide.

He explained that the theme of the festival - unDERcover - could be interpreted in various ways - tucking yourself under the bed covers with a good book; exposing silenced voices; uncovering works that had not been available before.

(The theme) has allowed SWF to present readers a rich diversity of authors whose works - ranging from horror through crime to 'serious fiction' - are at once accessible and fun but yet serve as a metaphor for social and humanitarian issues.

The festival this year spans 9 days of events; features 100 participating writers and 150 events on the programme; and has a 60-40 ratio of Singaporean writers to overseas writers. (Check out some of the writers and what they think about coming to the festival on Eric's blog, and also here.)

The biggest name, as far as local readers are concerned is Neil Gaiman, and the organisers have had to move the event to a bigger venue because of the enormous demand for tickets.

Khor Kok Wah, deputy chief executive officer and Director, Literary Arts of Singapore’s National Arts Council (centre) spoke of Malaysia's cultural links with Singapore, naming for example the Second Link theatre performances, and the fact than our new writer laureate's works are studied in Singapore schools. He also pointed out that many Singaporean writers were born in Malaysia and there was crossing of the border on a personal basis, and a deep sense of sharing between the two countries.

Then it was over to the Malaysian authors. Anwar Ridwan (right) spoke about the need to identify new writing talent and about how we needed to know each others writers well.

KS Maniam (left) talked about the relationship with Singaporean writers, particularly in his own case with Edwin Thumboo.

And of course Malaysian poet and playwright Wong Phui Nam, of course, provided us with the biggest surprise of the afternoon. One which I'm still mulling over. (As, it seems from the comments on that post, so are you.)

Wrong Place to Buy a Book

2009-10-17T13:31:00.003+08:00

No, I couldn't believe it either!

(Thanks Liz for forwarding this.)