New Books

Lethal Lesson and other stories by Adeline Lee Zhia Ern (RM 30.00)

One day, mother said to me, "Do you want to go to Malaya?" I stared at her stupidly. Am I going to follow the other girls who have gone? Am I going to be married off? Mother told me that our neighbour, Lau, had a son in Malaya who needed a wife. I had only seen Yuan when he was a little boy, thus the impression of his face was fuzzy in my mind. "You're already twenty-one. You should have been married a long time ago. Do you want to go?" I was not sure. If I were to go, I knew life would be extremely different there. But as a daughter, I knew my mother wanted her request obeyed. I was somehow intrigued by the idea of going to a new country. "Lau has promised three cows in exchange for your marriage to his son. I think it's a good transaction." I nodded. So it was settled. -- Extract from Belonging Somewhere.

It was a surprise to know of the writer's age after I read her book. The mastery of the language, the creativity, and the fact that it was not a sappy teenage love story made the reading enjoyable. He passion must be encouraged. This is a good start to a writing career. Good Luck. -- Dina Zaman author of I am Muslim.

Fresh, unafraid and disarmingly unpretentious. Adeline lets her imagination rule her stories. Adeline also writes with a clarity that will surely serve her well in her writing future. -- Shih-Li Kow author of Ripples and other stories.

Other new Malaysian titles:

All the Beloveds by Alina Rastam (RM 35.00)
D is for Depression by Choong Khuat Hock (RM 25.00)
33 Food Hotspots: Kuala Lumpur's Ultimate Food Guide (60.00)
Kathakali: Kumpulan Cerpen Bahasa Malaysia by Uthaya Sankar SB (RM 20.00)

(Institit Terjemahan Negara Malaysia Berhad has recently supplied Silverfish Books with more than 130 titles, which we are currently processing.)

Labels: Fiction

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Map of the Invisible World by Tash Aw (RM 64.90)

From the author of the internationally acclaimed, Costa Award-winning The Harmony Silk Factory comes an enthralling new novel that evokes an exotic yet turbulent and often frightening world. 16-year-old Adam is an orphan three times over. He and his older brother, Johan, were abandoned by their mother as children; he watched as Johan was adopted and taken away by a wealthy couple; and he had to hide when Karl, the Dutch man who raised him, was arrested by soldiers during Sukarno's drive to purge 1960s Indonesia of its colonial past. Adam sets out on a quest to find Karl, but all he has to guide him are some old photos and letters, which send him to the colourful, dangerous capital, Jakarta. Johan, meanwhile, is living a seemingly carefree, privileged life in Malaysia, but is careening out of control, unable to forget the long-ago betrayal of his helpless, trusting brother.

Other new Malaysian books on the shelf:

Taxi Tales on a Crooked Bridge by Charlene Rajendran (RM 28.00)

Sejarah Melayu (Paperback, RM 45.00)

Leyden's Malay Annals (Paperback, RM 55.00)

Malay Annals (Paperback, RM 45.00)

Labels: Fiction

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The Loneliest Profession in the World by Jerome Kugan (RM 10.00)

The Loneliest Profession in the World collects new poems written by Malaysian Poet and singer songwriter Jerome Kugan. The poems were written between October 2008 and February 2009, and explores the intricacies of relationship, desire and loss. Memory and emotion collide with acerbic wit and humour to produce an often astonishing and affecting look at the nature of love.



Dua Lauk - Fiksi Popkon dari Zon Imaginasi Terlarang by Taf Teh & D'Ianadi (RM 20.00)

Fiksi Popkon dari Zon Imaginasi Terlarang, adalah kumpulan cerpen oleh dua orang penulis wanita yang semakin dikenali di dunia maya. Pendek, padat dan penuh imaginasi, fiksyen-fiksyen mereka dijangka akan mencarta koordinat baru dalam peta sastera Malaysia.

"Aku tiba di hadapan 7Eleven. Budak-budak Melayu beruniform merah bergurau senda gembira di kaunter. Seronok ya, dik, dapat kerja dalam ekon?"

Dalam koleksi fiksi dua perempuan ni kerja dalam ekon adalah kemuncak hidup, dan mati itu satu kelegaan.

Kerana, siapa mahu hidup dalam dunia yang dipenuhi kucing-kucing pondan, lipas yang ugut minta ufti, lelaki emo yang suka minum susu stroberi, dan mekap yang buat kau nampak macam robot tak berperasaan.

Labels: Fiction, Poetry

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Ripples and other stories by Shih-Li Kow (RM 30.00)

Labels: Fiction

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Tales from the Court and other stories by Matthew Thomas -- Silverfish Books, Price RM30.00.

Rukumani Devi, the court interpreter cum court clerk, cum file caller, cum amicus curiae of the court, cum confidant of the magistrate, cum Amway agent rose, a tinge of white ash smeared on her forehead and in a crisp yellow sari, looking important. She reeled out the civil and criminal action numbers with accompanying names of legal firms so fast that I missed mine.

She then called a second time around, this time angrily, "How many times must call-lah?"

Rukumani Devi conducted herself as would a maestro conducting an orchestra. Everything was at her fingertips, an upturned palm if she wanted counsel to stand and a down-turned palm for counsel to sit. The Magistrate, the lawyers and litigants paid her great heed.


As Mohamed M Keshavjee writes in his afterword: In this compendium of short stories, the author, who is a keen student of human foibles, gives us a series of vignettes from the Kuala Lumpur of the 1950s. His characters come vividly to life: from Eddodes, the creative and legendary builder of castles in the air and Boniface 'Birdie Boy' Ratnayake, the aspirant judge, to Musso the exorcist, and Mike Kumar, the confidence trickster. In this book, all these characters talk to us. The author captures the very essence of their being and their cultures as they play their little games in life, made up of illusions, craftiness, ego, hope and aspirations.

Labels: Fiction

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Evening is the Whole Day by Preeta Samarasan (Estimated Retail Price: RM 59.90) (The price is an estimate only based on books of similar nature. At the time of writing the distributor has not brought the books in yet.)

Set in Malaysia, this spellbinding and already internationally acclaimed debut introduces us to the prosperous Rajasekharan family as its closely guarded secrets are slowly peeled away.

When Chellam, the family's rubber-plantation-bred servant girl, is dismissed for unnamed crimes, her banishment is the latest of a series of recent, precipitous losses that have shaken six-year-old Aasha's life. A few short weeks before, Aasha's grandmother Paati passed away under mysterious circumstances and her older sister, Uma, departed for the Columbia University -- leaving Aasha alone to cope with her mostly absent father, her bitter mother, and her impertubable older brother.

Beginning with Aasha's granfather's ascension from Indian coolie to illustrious resident of the Big House on Kingfisher Lane, and going on to tell the story of how Appa, the family's Oxford-educated patriarch, courted Amma, the humble girl next door, Evening is the Whole Day moves gracefully backward and forward in time to answer the many questions that haunt the family: What was Chellam's unforgivable crime? Why was Uma so intent on leaving? How and why did Paati die? What did Aasha see? And underscoring all these mysteries: What ultimately became of Appa's once grand dreams for his family and his country?

Sweeping in scope, sumptuously lyrical, and masterfully constructed, Evening is the Whole Day offers an unflinching look at relationships between parents and children, brothers and sisters, the wealthy and the poor, a country and its citizens -- and the ways in which each sometimes fails the other. Illuminating in heartbreaking detail one Indian immigrant family's secrets and lies while exposing the complex underbelly of Malaysia itself, Preeta Samarasan's debut is a mesmerizing and vital achievement sure to earn her place alongside Arundhati Roy, Kiran Desai and Zadie Smith.

Labels: Fiction

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Aweks Kl by various writers (Stormkitchen, RM 15.00)

A collection of new writing in Malay, done mostly by Malay women in Malaysia (because we simply didn't get enough submissions to make it an all-female book). The short stories and poems permit us the slightest of peeks into the mind of the modern Malay woman which, like the forbidden glimpse of a thigh, has been hitherto consigned to the backrooms of society as it is with children, to be only seen and not heard.

Included as a bonus are three previously unpublished stories by literary superstar Dina Zaman. Also featuring the talented Tifani Teh in her literay debut, the heavenly working class prose of Bimme S, the earthy music of Australia's Marlyn King, and the sad, bad, and dangerous lament of the Iranian, Fatemeh Zargar.

The books is available at Silverfish Books. Now!

Labels: Fiction

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Title:Kasut Biru Rubina
Author: Sufian Abas
Publisher: Sang Freud Press
ISBN:
Price: MYR15.00
(This book is in Malay)

A woman wakes up without her body. A boy tries to endure the pain of being an adult when mini animals start to come out of his anus. What do you do when angels forgot to bring a unicorn for your daughter's birthday? And are all shoes evil or just the blue ones?

Many of the characters in Kasut Biru Rubina want to live ordinary lives. But the unexpected happen. Brief, shocking, and full of lies that can only come from the twisted mind of Nigerian scammers, Sufian Abas' stories are snapshots that illuminate the strange hidden in a world we never want to live in.

Title:New Malaysian Essays 1
Series Editor: Amir Muhammad
Authors: Brian Yap, Aminuddin Mahmud, Burhan Baki, Saharil
Hasrin Sanin, Amir Muhammad & Sonia Randhawa.
Publisher: Matahari Books (2008). Pages 254,
ISBN: 987-983-43596-1-4
Price: MYR30.00

New Malaysian Essays 1 is the first of a planned annual seriesconcentrating on local non-fiction writing. From polemic to ode to memoir, this series invites Malaysian readers - and writers - to notice, analyse and interpret the living, throbbing, squelching vitality around them. Multi-disciplinary, multi-tasking and bestappreciated on multi-vitamins, this first collection takes us from Brian Yap's election-era critique to Amir Muhammad's alternative lexicon by way of Burhan Baki's elegant deconstructions, Aminuddin Mahmud's seminar on branding and Saharil Hasnin Sanin's knockabout ruminations on language [in Malay] before rounding off with Sonia Randhawa's stirring call for national (and therefore personal) self-realisation.

Amir Muhammad and three of his friends will read and discuss the book at Silverfish Books on the 23rd of February 2008, at 5.30 pm. (See 'Events'.)

Both these books can be purchased online at http://www.silverfishbooks.com/Silverfish/Version4/buybooks/BuyBooks.html

Labels: Fiction, Politics

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News from Home

by Chua Kok Yee, Shih-Li Kow and Rumaizah Abu Bakar has been a long
time coming.

Ever since Silverfish Books started publishing activities in 2001, we have been continually asked about the next big thing, namely the next big Malaysian writer. We gave a lot of people hope. While the Silverfish New Writing series was a tremendous success (and it still is very popular) it did not bring to the surface the multitudes of Malaysian writers hiding in the woodwork, waiting for an opportunity to be discovered and be published. The Silverfish New Writing series remains a snapshot of Malaysians writing in English, though we have begun to question its relevance in unearthing new authors.

The Silverfish Writing Programme is an entirely different initiative, the purpose of which was to give writers an opportunity to not just to get published but, also, guiding and training them. The Programme started in June 2006 and we now present to you the first three writers in print. Chua Kok Yee attended the first one, Shih-Li Kow the third, and Rumaizah Abu Bakar the fourth. We are as excited as the writers themselves with this project.

Ten stories were selected from each writer for this book. (Yes, they all have many more that they have completed and many more they are still working on.) Ten stories, we felt, would be a nice number to introduce each of them to Malaysian readers, each with their own distinct Malaysian voice, and each with a slightly different story to tell and way of telling it. These are all writers to look forward to, writers who are genuinely Malaysian and modern. At the time of writing this, they are all working on their own 'solo' efforts which they hope to complete next year.

Chua Kok Yee, who is from Ipoh, manages a cosmetic company in his day job, having graduated from the University of Malaya in 1995. He says he doesn't have a life anymore considering how he says he spends all his spare time now reading and writing. Gothic tales of horror, tender love stories or tongue-in-cheek retelling of fairy tales, Chua Kok Yee does it all. Is he our own Murakami?

Shih-Li Kow holds a degree in Chemical Engineering and currently works for a property developer to pay her bills. But her passion is writing and is a distinctive stylist who is clever and yet charming. Her work defies categorization. I thought Peach Blossom Luck was a gem until I read Don't Depend on Me, and then A Job to Love, and Pak Hassan's Story, and ... All of them different, all of them little jewels. She makes her point not with a smash-down-your-head sledgehammer style but with deft nicks of a rapier.

Rumaizah Abu Bakar describes herself as a Public Relations professional with a degree in Accountancy. Rumaizah is a writer who is all heart, who so obviously loves the people she writes about, whether it is Shanti the hotel room-cleaner, or Chef Chen the highly principled hotel cook, or Aunt Aini who lost in love but never fell out of it, and a host of others. She joined the Silverfish Writing Programme later than the other two but has made remarkable progress, especially over the past few months.

If there is one thing the three writers have in common, it is their dogged determination to succeed and their work ethic. Whenever they failed they tried and tried again, refusing to be discouraged and taking every harsh criticism as a challenge.

This volume is the first in, what we hope will be, a series unearthing new generations of writers who can hold their own against the rest of the world, and still remain distinctly Malaysian.

News from Home is the first book to carry the 'Malaysian Literature in English' sticker, a new initiative to promote Malaysian literature within the country and overseas. We have, in the past, already published several books in this category including Lloyd Fernando, Salleh ben Joned and Huzir Sulaiman. We believe Malaysian literature has what it takes to earn international recognition with its uniqueness.

Labels: Fiction

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Confessions of an Old Boy by Kam Raslan (RM 32.00)

We have been waiting for this book for a a while. We have not had time to read it yet, so here is the blurb from the back page:

Dato' Hamid - The Old Boy and civil servant who's been everywhere and seen it all (even though he never wanted to). Here he 'spills the beans' on his adventures dating back to the 1940s, from Kuala Lumpur to Monte Carlo, Los Angeles to Algiers, London to Temerloh Rest House and much more. Along the way, Dato' Hamid tussles with a beautiful seductress-cum diamond thief; is corrupted by a ruthlessly ambitious banker; and help solve the murder of a billionaire businessman. And all the time he wishes he were back at home tending his orchids and nursing his favourite cognac.

Shameless, exciting and funny, Dato' Hamid's life and adventures chart the financial, political and amorous relationships that have made Malaysia what it is today.

You'll never meet anyone quite like Dato' Hamid, but You'll know him.

Labels: Fiction

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