Why MBBY?

I put up a post some time back about the MBBY (Malaysian Board on books for Young People) when they held their conference in July. But as Daphne Lee points out in a blogpost entitled Bringing Books and Children Together - But Where? And When? And How? this seems to a singularly ineffective organisation (presumably guzzling taxpayers' money) when promoting reading among children in Malaysia needs to be made a top priority.

Daphne has some tough questions for the MBBY and some suggestions for how the organisation could grow. But does anyone care to listen? Is there now anyone there at all? (The organisation's website seems to have completely disappeared!)

You Really Don't have to Read Everything!

Feeling guilty because you haven't actually read Updike? (I am to some extent since I read Couples and a the first two of the Rabbit novels so long ago they probably don't count anymore.)

James Delingpole in The Telegraph absolves you ... from any bookguilt actually:

You can still count as a civilised person, with the right to comment as much as you wish on the key literary issues of our time, without having read all the books you are supposed to have read.

Partly you're excused by the issue of time. In the early 19th century, it might just have been possible for a sprightly reader with bags of leisure time to whizz through all the great novels that had ever been written. In the early 21st century, it's an impossibility.

Mainly though, you're excused by the fact that there's no novelist out there so essential that an unfamiliarity with his work represents a crime against taste and good judgment.

Whilst he's not arguing against the literary canon, he says :

... once you've had a reasonable grounding in sufficient "proper" literature to form your taste, you should never again read a book out of duty. Far too many of the (depressingly few) novel-readers I know do, though. They feel compelled to read the must-read new literary prizewinner; the must-read new, vibrant-insight-into-remote-foreign-culture novel. They have this idea in their heads, instilled from having to revere the classics at school, that literature is a lofty thing, that the best writing is fine writing or stuff they don't quite understand or feels slightly hard work.

Self-Published? Could Win!

Are you a self-published author? If so, this might interest you :

Writer's Digest is searching for the best self-published books of the past few years. Whether you're a professional writer, part-time freelancer, or a self-starting student, here's your chance to enter the only competition exclusively for self-published books.

Details here. And yes, this competition is open to Malaysians, but the language of publication must be English.

Polarbear Performance

I like the idea that, I’m here now, (and) you’re there; boom, I perform, (and) it’s gone. ... I think I’m a bit of a nerd, I like the excitement of (something being) momentary, and only available at that time.

Performance poet Steven Camden aka Polarbear is interviewed in The Star today following his performance at Wayang Kata VII, organised by The British Council.

Volunteers Needed to Bring the Joy of Books

This from Daphne Lee:

In 2009, The Dram Projects is concentrating on bringing the thrill and joy of reading to children who belong to communities that have little or no access to books.

At present TDP is visiting a refugee centre in Setapak, and an orphanage in Taman Tun Dr Ismail.

We would like to extend our reach but in order to do so, we need volunteers who are willing to spend several hours each week (preferably weekdays but weekends too) with children and teens at homes and shelters.

Volunteers are required to read to the children/teens and facilitate discussion groups and art-in-response-to-stories sessions. Training will be provided.

If you're interested in volunteering or just being kept informed of TDP's activities, please put your email address down on the board that is going round.

(For your blog please say that those who are interested can email info@dramprojects.com or find out more here )

Barry for Costa

Irish novelist Sebastian Barry takes this year's Costa Prize for The Secret Scripture ... despite most of the judges feeling that the book was deeply flawed and almost none of them liking the ending!

What redeemed it? According to Matthew Parris, chair of the final judges:

Sebastian Barry has created one of the great narrative voices in contemporary fiction in The Secret Scripture. It is a book of great brilliance, powerfully and beautifully written.

The novel tells the story of Roseanne McNulty, a very old woman living in a mental institution and secretly writing her memoirs in an attempt to reclaim her past. Her narrative is interwoven with that of her psychiatrist, Dr Grene, whose:

...own sense of self becomes entangled with the fate of this mysterious old lady.

The novel was earlier shortlisted for the Booker prize.

Postscript :

All literature is flawed, everything creative is by its nature flawed ...

says Lisa Jewell, one of the Costa judges, in The Telegraph, explaining that Barry's book :

... was, quite simply, magic.

In the same paper, Robert Colville asks why the judges are so grudging in their praise, but seems to rather welcome their honesty!

Postscript 2 :

As James Delingpole so rightly points out in The Telegraph:

And their shining example of the novel that isn't flawed is what exactly? All novels are flawed, that's the whole point. Dickens goes on a bit as – my, and how! – does George Eliot; War and Peace ends with 100 pages of rambling, esoteric spiritual drivel; Proust badly needs pruning; Dan Brown and Jeffrey Archer aren't great prose stylists. ... As a novelist it's the first – and most depressing – thing you learn about your trade: that between the sweeping ambition of your conception and the reality of your execution there will always be a terrifyingly large gulf. All novels, even the greatest ones, are failures. It's just that most readers are too polite to notice.

Giving the Mundane its Beautiful Due

The writer must face the fact that ordinary lives are what most people live most of the time, and that the novel as a narration of the fantastic and the adventurous is usually an escapist plot, that aesthetically the ordinary, the banal, is what you must deal with. So I tried to make interesting narratives out of ordinary life by obscure and average Americans.

One of America's greatest authors has passed away yesterday, aged 76, after battling lung cancer. John Updike was that rare animal - a best-selling author who enjoyed literary acclaim winning the Pulitzer twice. His novels include the four novels in the Rabbit series, featuring onetime basketball star Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom who becomes a car dealer in a small town. Perhaps though his most widely known novel was The Witches of Eastwick which was turned into a film. His most recent novel is a sequel : The Widows of Eastwick, which came out last year. A collection of short fiction My Father's Tears and Other Stories is due out in June. The BBC has a list of Updike quotations (from which I took the one above), and here's another lovely one about being a writer:

There's a kind of confessional impulse that not every literate, intelligent person has. A crazy belief that you have some exciting news about being alive, and I guess that more than talent is what separates those who do it from those who think they'd like to do it. That your witness to the universe can't be duplicated, that only you can provide it, and that it's worth providing.

Meanwhile, the tributes flow in. Mitchiko Kakutani in The New York Times calls him :

... arguably this country’s one true all-around man of letters. He moved fluently from fiction to criticism, from light verse to short stories to the long-distance form of the novel ... a literary decathlete in our age of electronic distraction and willful specialization, Victorian in his industriousness and almost blogger-like in his determination to turn every scrap of knowledge and experience into words.... (But) It is as a novelist who opened a big picture window on the American middle class in the second half of the 20th century, however, that he will be best remembered. In his most resonant work, Mr. Updike gave “the mundane its beautiful due,” as he once put it, memorializing the everyday mysteries of love and faith and domesticity with extraordinary nuance and precision. In Kodachrome-sharp snapshots, he gave us the 50’s and early 60’s of suburban adultery, big cars and wide lawns, radios and hi-fi sets, and he charted the changing landscape of the 70’s and 80’s, as malls and subdivisions swallowed up small towns and sexual and social mores underwent a bewildering metamorphosis.

I'll put in links to other interesting pieces as I find them. Postscript : The Guardian has Updike's life in pictures and a whole list of authors including Richard Ford and Toni Morisson pay tribute. I like what Zadie Smith says :

Updike's example seemed the model of a real writer's life, in that this was an existence spent not in talking about writing, promising to write, boasting of having written or telling other people how they should write, but simply in the act of writing, every day, for decades.

There's another piece here by Martin Amis - and I impressed to learn that Updike had four studies in his house, each for a different type of writing! John Mulland and John Sutherland suggest the best titles to begin with, if you're embarking on your own voyage of Updike discovery. The Telegraph has an interview with the author from last year.

Diaspora in Jaipur, Launch in Delhi

Congrats to Tash Aw whose second novel Map Of The Invisible World is being launched today at the Habitat Centre in Delhi by HarperCollins India, along with Lijia Zhang's Socialism Is Great! A Worker's Memoir Of The New China.

Jabberwock caught the session with Tash, Hari Kunzru, Tahmima Anam and Nadeem Aslan at the Jaipur Literary festival a few days back where the authors on the topic "Diaspora". They talked about heir personal cultural journeys and also about whether or not they felt a responsibility to their country when they wrote ...

From False Memoir to Novel

Exactly what I thought should happen too - a falsified memoir gets turned into a work of fiction.

Remember a week or two ago I told you about Herman Rosenblat's Angel at the Fence? The original publisher canceled publication after some details were found to be false. Film rights were sold, and now a second publisher has made a deal for a novel adapted from the film.

This way a very valid story is not lost to the world, but readers aren't deceived. And I really wish that could be the case with some of the other bogus memoirs I've been blogging about ...

Postscript :

Very interesting side story - Dan Bloom in Taiwan was apparently the one who initially blew the whistle on the bogusness of Rosenblat's book ... while Gabe Sherman and The New Republic take the credit.

Robinson, Bolaño Nominated for National Book Award

The National Book Critics Circle have announced the 2008 shortlists. These are the fiction titles :

Roberto Bolaño - 2666
Marilynne Robinson - Home
Aleksandar Hemon - The Lazarus Project
M. Glenn Taylor - The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart
Elizabeth Strout - Olive Kittredge

You can see all the nominations in other categories here.

Gong Xi Fa Chai

Wishing my Chinese friends a very Happy New Year and everyone else a happy holiday!

When Fatimah Lost her Kampung

A few days ago I wrote about the launch of a children's book called Fatimah's Kampung by Iain Buchanan at Badan Warisan. I ended up being pretty late because I had decided to walk to Jalan Stonor from KLCC, along what I thought was a familiar route. I ended up getting lost, completely thrown by the way the area has changed since I was last there, with huge high-rises and building sites beginning to dominate this formerly green and peaceful enclave with its colonial bungalows.

I realise now, after reading the book, that there's a certain irony to all this - for Fatimah's Kampong is the story about how a landscape changes as the city encroaches, and how what is best about a place will be sacrificed to commercial interest.

In the introduction to the book Buchanan talks about how the book came to be written. He says he came to Malaysia first to teach shortly after Independence and that he took away with him a memory of the landscape which became part of him.

He continued to teach geography in a university in the East Midlands, and one day he had a call from one of his former students, Maznoor, now a college lecturer herself, coming to the UK to do a diploma in TEFL. They later married and Buchanan found himself part of a :

... large, lively, and very loving Malaysian family ..

But revisiting the landscape he had fallen in love with, he found that there was good reason to mourn :

... there was painted concrete, dead laterite and a gaudy brittle sameness ...

After taking early retirement, and wanting to communicate the ideas that he has lectured on in a way that was more vivid and exciting to young people, he began work on Fatimah's Kampung, a labour of love which took him eight years to complete, while Maznoor went out to work in a British factory to pay the bills. It was a true labour of love.

The book tells the story of a girl growing up in Kampong Hidayah. The family home was built by her great-grandfather with materials taken from the forest. When most of the other kampungs disappeared because of the expansion of the city it was allowed to remain untouched by the Sultan who owned the land.

Fatimah grows up amidst fruit trees, and forest (where she believes Pak Belang the tiger still might be hiding), and near to the frangipani filled graveyard where her relatives were laid to rest, and the keramat once home to a holy man who knew the ways of the forest in the way no others did.

The rhythms of kampong life of are recorded - her grandmother gathering herbs to cure ailments, the children's games, the visits by hawkers, Ramadan and the bustle of Hari Raya at the end of it, the monsoon floods.

But then the bulldozers move in and Fatimah and her family are forced to relocate to a high rise near by where they can see the final destruction of their kampung, and the forest around it.

There is one small mercy - the kampong house itself is to be saved and taken to be part of a new theme park which Fatimah gets the chance to visit.

Labelling books can sometimes do them a disservice, and whilst the book will undoubtedly appeal to older children (many of whom may have lived the story!), it will strike a chord with every Malaysian who cares about the environment and heritage, regardless of age, and will probably travel very well beyond these shores as the issues it raises are universal ones. I'm not ashamed to say that the story moved me to tears - especially the part where Fatimah finally does come face to face with her tiger.

But it is the stunning illustrations, with every detail of tree and leaf and kampung lovingly recorded, which make this book an absolute joy to own. (I have had to pries my copy out of the hands of visitors to the house who haven't wanted to put it down and talk to me!)

I wonder if Fatimah's Kampung might not be better described as a graphic novel and one that could easily become a classic of the genre?

The book is published by the Consumers Association of Penang, and this surprises on two counts. First of all, the organisation is known for its pamphlets on consumer and environmental issues and they have not, to my knowledge, ever undertaken a project like this before. Secondly, that they have made such a great job of it - this is a beautifully produced book that you could put beside any produced overseas and feel proud of.

Have I raved? Sorry. But I sincerely mean every word of praise I have heaped on this book.

But why not see for yourself? Iain will be appearing at Readings@Seksan this coming Saturday and a limited number of his books will be on sale.

Readings January

“Readings”

Catch our next monthly writers event:

Date: 31st January, 2009
Time: 3.30pm
Place: Seksan's, 67, Jalan Tempinis Satu, Lucky Garden, Bangsar

(Map www.seksan.com)

The readers for this month include:

Iain Buchanan
Umapagan Ampikaipakan
Amir Muhammad
Brian Gomez
Saiful Nizam bin Shukor
Shantini Venugopal

We also have Peter and Markiza providing music, and Yvonne Foong will be along to sell her tee shirts to raise funds for her medical treatment.

This is our fourth birthday celebration and there will be cake!!!

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

"Readings" is the birth-child of Bernice Chauly, lovingly fostered by Sharon Bakar.

(For enquiries contact Sharon 012-6848835, sharonbakar@yahoo.com)

Self-Evident Truths About Reading

Without the sunshine of literature children cannot grow as they should. We know that from books come knowledge and understanding, that they are a source of infinite joy and fun, that they stimulate imagination and creativity, that they open eyes and minds and hearts. It is through the power and music and magic of stories and poems that children can expand their own intellectual curiosity, develop the empathy and awareness that they will need to tackle the complexities of their own emotions, of the human condition in which they find themselves. And it's through books that we can learn the mastery of words, the essential skill that will enable us to express ourselves well enough to achieve our potential in the classroom and beyond.

This is of course, self-evident, says children's author Michael Morpurgo in The Times yet a high proportion of children in British schools are functionally illiterate. He suggests that the best way to bring up standards is through helping children to enjoy literature :

Give the children the books early, give them the love of books early. Let the spelling and the punctuation and the comprehension, important though they are, let them come later, and be taught in such a way that all the wonder and the magic and the fun are not lost in the process.

And of course I post this hoping that the same message will get through to teachers and educational planners here, where even more kids leave school subliterate. Say the same thing often enough ...

Also in The Times, Amanda Craig has tips on finding the right books for your child.

How Not to Write a Novel

As a writer you have only one job: to make the reader turn the page. Of all the tools a writer uses to make a reader turn the page, the most essential is the plot. It doesn't matter if the plot is emotional (“Will Jack's fear of commitment prevent him from finding true love with Synthya?”), intellectual (“But Jack, Synthya's corpse was found in a locked room, with nothing but a puddle on the floor next to her and a recently thawed leg of mutton on the end table!”), or physical (“Will Jack's unconstitutional torture of Synthya Abu Dhabi, the international terrorist, lead to the location of the ticking bomb?”) - as long as it compels the reader to find out what happens next. If your reader doesn't care what happens next - it doesn't.

Typically, the plot of a good novel begins by introducing a sympathetic character who wrestles with a thorny problem. As the plot thickens, the character strains every resource to solve the problem, while shocking developments and startling new information help or hinder her on the way. Painful inner conflicts drive her onward but sometimes also paralyse her at a moment of truth. She finally overcomes the problem in a way that takes the reader by surprise, but in retrospect seems both elegant and inevitable.

The plot of a typical unpublished novel introduces a protagonist, then introduces her mother, father, three brothers and her cat, giving each a long scene in which they exhibit their typical behaviors one after another. This is followed by scenes in which they interact with each other in different combinations, meanwhile driving restlessly to restaurants, bars, and each other's homes, all of which is described in detail.

There's a delicious extract from How Not to Write a Novel :200 Mistakes to Avoid at All Costs If You Ever Want to Get Published by Sandra Newman and Howard Mittelmark on The Times website, with much more sterling advice for the wannabe.

The authors have more on their website, including this rather nice post called What About I, The Literary Novelist - which shows that writing crap is within anyone's grasp, MFA or not.

Oh, and then there's the "bookfomerical" (nice way of getting around saying "book trailer" which is copyrighted elsewhere) :




This is on my want list!

Si-Fi and Fantasy Must Reads

Yes, Preeta's right, The Guardian's Sci-fi and Fantasy recommendations (part of that 1,000 books) deserves special mention. (Main page here and then look for the three part list at the side.) Oh yeah, and that bloke Burgess has two titles on it - End of the World News and A Clockwork Orange. Both I highly recommend if you haven't picked them up yet.

Burgess Foundation Comes to KL

Following the success of our Time for a Tiger : Remembering Burgess event and Rob Spence's visit last January :

The International Anthony Burgess Foundation will hold its 3rd Symposium in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from 27th-30th July, 2009. The theme of the conference is Conflict, Dialogue and Resolution in Burgess’s work. It is expected that Burgess scholars from Britain, America, Australia and Malaysia will take part in the event. An internationally renowned keynote speaker is being sought for the event, possibly drawn from the Foundation’s honorary patrons, who include Umberto Eco, A.S. Byatt, David Lodge and William Boyd.

Anthony Burgess (1917-1993) was an English novelist, critic, composer, playwright and dramatist, most famous for the novel A Clockwork Orange. His first novels arose out of his experience in Malaysia in the fifties. The IABF was founded by Burgess’s widow, Liana, the Contessa Pasi della Pergola, to provide a focus for the academic study of Burgess’s work. It has a base in Manchester, publishes a newsletter, and organises events relating to Burgess’s work. Its mission is to encourage and support public and scholarly interest in all aspects of Anthony Burgess's life and works

The symposium will feature a visit to Malay College at Kuala Kangsar* where Burgess taught, and other events.

For further information please contact the Foundation’s Director, Alan Roughley at director@anthonyburgess.org

If anyone locally is able to sponsor the event in any way, or have ideas for good things we might do around the sympozium, please do get in touch with me : sharonbakar at yahoo dot com.

I also want to spread the word to all the academics out there who might be interested, so perhaps some of you (and I know some lecturers and students drop by here sometimes) could pass this message on?

I'm coordinating things locally, and have a couple of volunteers lined up to help me when things get busy. I will keep you informed of developments.

(This has yet to be finalised and permissions sought, but I'm sure will be possible - especially when and old girl of the school is organising this!)

Another Case of Lèse Majesté

Least we find ourselves getting upset only over the case of a foreign writer ending up in a Thai jail, you might like to consider the case of Thai academic Giles Ji Ungpakorn who yesterday was informed that he is being charged with lèse majesté (and faces a maximum of 15 years in jail) because of 8 paragraphs in Chapter 1 of his book A Coup for the Rich. (The book is banned in Thailand but can be read here on PDF.)





Go read the eight paragraphs which can be found on his blog. This is legitimate political discussion, is it not, of the kind you must be able to debate in your own country? Take another look at Article 19 the UN's Declaration of Human Rights if you have any hesitation in answering that question!

In an email that I just received from Giles, he says that it was the Director of Chulalongkorn University bookshop who decided to inform Special Branch that his book "insulted the Monarchy". :

The bookshop is managed by the academic management of the university. So much for academic freedom!

It looks like the present regime is concerned with creating a climate of fear in which no dissent can be brooked, and is using the royal shield of lèse majesté to legitimise that oppression.

If you feel moved to action :

1. Write a letter of protest/concern to Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, Government House, Bangkok, Thailand. Fax number +66 (0) 29727751

2. Write a letter of protest/concern to the Ambassador, The Royal Thai Embassy, in your country.

3. Demand that Amnesty International take up all lèse-majesté cases in Thailand.

4. Demand the abolition of the lèse-majesté law.

Syjuco on Asian Writing

I write against Southeast Asian exoticism and books that italicise Tagalog words or place names ... The Filipino or Asian experience is global. To say that a novel has to be set in Asia to be Asian is completely wrong.

Well exactly!

Winner of last year's Man Asian Literary Prize Miguel Syjuco is interviewed in The Australian [via]. He also suggests that:

Asian writers in general have a duty to expose the "cancers of their society" perhaps to an even greater extent than Western writers.

Go to it chaps!

Now its 1,000 novels You Must Read!

The other day I chucked The Telegraph's pretty daunting list of 100 books you must read, at you. It gets worse when you visit The Guardian website as they are listing 1,000 novels you must read! But happily this comprises many shorter lists of books by theme and genre compiled by different writers. There's something here, in short, for everyone. The series continues to the end of the week.

Postscript (24/2/09) :

This apparently isn't long enough! There's now a supplementary list supplied by readers who wanted to add their favourite titles.

So here are even more great love stories, fantasy/sci-fi titles, comedies, crime fiction, war and travel stories, and books on family and self.

Get Up Close and Personal with Reptiles

If you missed The Lizard King author Bryan Christie's recent appearances, here's another chance to catch him at Times, the Pavilion tomorrow night at 7.30p.m. - in the company of a few friends of the scaly and creepy crawly kind. Leowaniwa assures me that it's planned as a nice surprise for Bryan ...

I went to Bryan's talk the other day at the Academy of the Sciences and was intrigued by all he had to say about the wiles of smugglers and the work of enforcement officers. I'm really looking forward to reading the book.

City of Stories

The British Council, MPH, and London based Spread the Word are organising a series of creative writing workshops for aspiring and developing local writers from 11 – 20 Feb 2009. Here's the blurb :

Everyone loves a good story and these sessions will help writers hone their storytelling skills inspired by real lives and our urban setting. Whether you’re a first time writer or a published author, there’ll be a workshop for you!

Check out the workshop descriptions, timetable and registration details here.

Limited spaces so register early to avoid disappointment!

Everyone has a story to tell and our experienced writer-facilitators from the UK will help unearth the stories from amongst the everyday.

City of Stories will encourage participants to derive inspiration from their surroundings for the production of written work. The writers’ skills will be developed through innovative activities that creatively and sensitively engage the writers with their cities and with the people who inhabit these spaces.

Jeremy Sheldon and Sarah Butler from Spread The Word are the workshop facilitators.

Check out the workshop descriptions here.

Registering for workshops

The creative writing workshops are divided into two categories: beginner writers and advanced writers.

Beginner writers are first time writers who are writing for pleasure, just starting out, who might be in a class or writing group.

Advanced writers are published writers (short stories, articles, non-fiction, etc.) who are either trying to improve specific aspects of their writing, or are trying to get to the next stage in their careers.

Also note that workshops are open to participants aged 18 years old and above and limited to 12 participants a session.

Participation fee:

Half day workshops – no fee
One day workshops – RM 30 (includes lunch)
Two days workshop – RM 50 (includes lunch)

To register, download and complete the registration form and email it to: arts@britishcouncil.org.my

Advice Surgery :

Jeremy and Sarah will be in store at MPH 1 Utama and Mid Valley on 12, 17 and 19 Feb for 1:1 sessions with writers to give their work a full diagnostics. Each session is an hour long and starts from 2.30pm up to 9.30pm and no fee is charged.

If you wish to book an advice surgery session, contact us directly with your preferred date and also include your contact details, a summary of your writing experience and the work you wish you discuss during the session. Work submitted should not be more than 4,500 words.

About the workshop facilitators :

Jeremy Sheldon is the author of two works of fiction, The Comfort Zone and The Smiling Affair, as well as a number of anthologised short stories. He is a tutor on the MA in Creative Writing Programme at Birkbeck, University of London, and at Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine. He has led fiction workshops for the Arvon Foundation and Spread the Word in the UK and has taught internationally for organisations such as the Geneva Writers Conference and the British Council. In addition to this, Jeremy continues to work as a script editor and development consultant for script writers and film production companies. He graduated from the MA in Creative Writing at UEA in 1996.

Sarah Butler is a writer and freelance project manager with a particular interest in the relationship between writing and place. In 2006 she set up her consultancy, UrbanWords , to explore the area of creative writing and regeneration. Sarah’s background is in community and participatory literature development and has an MA in creative writing from University of East Anglia. She is currently writer-in-residence for a project called Almost an Island? based on the Greenwich Peninsula.

Spread the Word is a London based organisation dedicated to developing writers of all ages and at varying stages of their careers, leading workshops and support groups for writers, and working with writers who offer a tailored approach to education and outreach.

The programme falls under the British Council Inclusive Cities project, which aims to promote that the channels of artistic and cultural expression in a city are inclusive of and accessible to a diverse range of community groups.

Robert's Guidelines

Ideally a story should linger, even haunt you in some way (not in a scary way, but bother you, perhaps; at least make you think about life) so that even a year later, you’re still thinking about that story. Also, I’ll be looking at character motivation, development and change (no change, no story!). Are there conflicts on more than one level? Are the characters memorable? Settings clearly defined? An opening that hooks the reader? Any tension that’s pulls the reader from the beginning to the end? An ending that I didn’t see coming or that resonates in a way that I wasn’t expecting?

Robert Raymer, who is (along with Eric Forbes and myself - okay so now you know!) one of the judges in the MPH-Alliance National Short Story Prize 2009 has blogged some excellent advice for anyone planning to submit an entry.

Lucky Sarawakians who get to attend his workshop in Kucing - wish we could have him over here!

(Photo by Georgette Tan.)

Australian Author Imprisoned in Thailand

An Australian author and teacher, Harry Nicolaides, has been jailed for 3 years under Thailand's draconian law of lèse majesté - insulting the monarchy. (Do go watch the video footage and see the poor guy shuffling around in chains - completely shameful!)

Nicholaides self-published a novel called Verisimilitude four years a go which sold a total of 7 copies. (The only copy which is still known to exist apparently sits on the shelf of the Thai National Library, freely available to the public!) The book contained a short passage, just 103 words long, which describes the rather flamboyant private life of an unnamed Thai prince.

(I dug around and found the actual extract here if your curiosity is getting the better of you!)

Nicolaides admitted the charge of insulting the royal family, but said he was unaware he was committing an offence.

The writer is by no means the only one to be suffering from this outdated and draconian law which, it seems, is (suprise, suprise) being misued by politicians.

The Australian Embassy more or less ignored the case! I see nothing about Nicolaides plight on Sydney PEN's page (something that does surprise me!).

But PEN American Centre has launched a protest and lists addresses where appeals can be sent.

I join with them in :

• Expressing serious concern about the detention and charge against writer Harry Nicolaides;

• Calling for his immediate and unconditional release in accordance with Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Thailand is a signatory.

Postscript :

Yusof found a PDF of the whole book (complete with library stamp!) - read and enjoy!

You can add your name to a petition to stop lèse majesté in Thailand here.

Send Your Writing Here

Need somewhere to send your work?

Chiew-Siah sent me word of the Edwin Morgan International Poetry Competition 2009, Britain's richest poetry prize (the main winner gets £5000). The closing date is June 2.

Writers Digest have announced their annual competition where prizes are awarded in 10 categories :

* Inspirational Writing (Spiritual/Religious)
* Memoirs/Personal Essay
* Magazine Feature Article
* Genre Short Story (Mystery, Romance, etc.)
* Mainstream/Literary Short Story
* Rhyming Poetry
* Non-rhyming Poetry
* Stage Play
* Television/Movie Script
* Children's/Young Adult Fiction

Both competitions are open to everyone, and there is (Yusof will be thrilled to hear!) no age limit. However, there is a fee for submission.

John Mortimer Dies - Rumpole in Limbo

Sir John Mortimer author of the Rumpole of the Bailey novels died on Friday, age 85.

Apparently he had just started work on a new novel, entitled Rumpole and the Younger Generation, his editor, Tom Lacey says. Now it won't be finished unless another author steps in.

Even if you haven't read the books (and I have happy memories of enjoying some of the earlier novels in the series) you may well have seen the the TV series Leo McKern played the fictional barrister.

His son Jeremy Mortimer writes a wonderful tribute for The Telegraph describing his father as a man of many contradictions with a talent for being loved.

And you can find his last TV interview here :

How a Book is Made

This is A-Z how books are made. Honestly.



[From Macmillan, US and found via]

McCrum Muses on Age

Old people, in general, don't have literary careers ... most writers begin to attract attention - as new young voices with something original to say.

Robert McCrum in The Observer today has some sobering things to say about authors and age, backed up with plenty of interesting examples.
Apparently, authors are most likely to produce great works in their 30's and most literary careers last no longer than ten years.
He reminds us that :

As a writer, you are always starting out afresh. Age and experience may teach you some tricks, but it will not touch your work with magic.

(Pic is of one of the exceptions to all this - 91 year-old memoirist Diana Athill, one of the finalists in the Costa Book Awards.)

Dead Books

I loved the books sculptures by Cara Barer in a slide show at The Telegraph and was happy to find even more images of her work on her website. (The one above is titled Kaleidoscope.)

Please tell her though, someone, that paper books are not dead yet, and hopefully won't ever be!

Little Hut Leaps Onto Shortlist!!!

Let's give a big collective cheer for Chiew-Siah Tei whose Little Hut of Leaping Fishes has been shortlisted for the Best Scottish Fiction, a prize held in conjunction with the Glasgow Book Festival, Aye Write. (More here.) It must be said that she's up against some very stiff competition!

The winner will be announced on March 14th.

100 Novels Everyone Should Read ... But Sez Who??

The Telegraph has a list of 100 novels 'everyone should read'. Who chose the titles and how the list was compiled is anyone's guess. I think it's supposed to be ranked so the No 1 title is the most important.

But anyway, when I see a list of books I have to play the game :

100 The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkein

99 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

98 The Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore

97 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

96 One Thousand and One Nights Anon

95 The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

94 Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

93 Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré

92 Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

91 The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki

90 Under the Net by Iris Murdoch

89 The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

88 Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin

87 On the Road by Jack Kerouac

86 Old Goriot by Honoré de Balzac

85 The Red and the Black by Stendhal

84 The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

83 Germinal by Emile Zola

82 The Stranger by Albert Camus

81The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

80 Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey

79 Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

78 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

77 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

76 The Trial by Franz Kafka

75 Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee

74 Waiting for the Mahatma by RK Narayan

73 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque

72 Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler

71 The Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin

70 The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

69 If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino

68 Crash by JG Ballard

67 A Bend in the River by VS Naipaul

66 Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

65 Dr Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

64 The Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz

63 The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

62 Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

61 My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk

60 One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

59 London Fields by Martin Amis

58 The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño

57 The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse

56 The Tin Drum by Günter Grass

55 Austerlitz by WG Sebald

54 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

53 The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

52 The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

51 Underworld by Don DeLillo

50 Beloved by Toni Morrison

49 The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

48 Go Tell It On the Mountain by James Baldwin

47 The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

46 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

45 The Voyeur by Alain Robbe-Grillet

44 Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre

43 The Rabbit books by John Updike

42 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

41 The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

40 The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

39 Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

38 The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

37 The Warden by Anthony Trollope

36 Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

35 Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis

34 The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

33 Clarissa by Samuel Richardson

32 A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell

31 Suite Francaise by Irène Némirovsky

30 Atonement by Ian McEwan

29 Life: a User’s Manual by Georges Perec

28 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding

27 Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

26 Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell

25 The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

24 Ulysses by James Joyce

23 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

22 A Passage to India by EM Forster

21 1984 by George Orwell

20 Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne

19 The War of the Worlds by HG Wells

18 Scoop by Evelyn Waugh

17 Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

16 Brighton Rock by Graham Greene

15 The Code of the Woosters by PG Wodehouse

14 Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

13 David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

12 Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

11 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

10 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

9 Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

8 Disgrace by JM Coetzee

7 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

6 In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust

5 Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

4 The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

3 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

2 Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

1 Middlemarch by George Eliot

Total 47%

Those I've read are in bold. Many of these I've read more than once, some several times.

Some of the ones I haven't read I don't feel guilty about because I've read others by the same author, some I've started but not finished, some I know from films or TV versions. Others I feel terribly guilty about ... especially the ones nagging at me from my bookshelves.

No Swearing Please - We're Malaysians

Raman is much amused by an English translation of the Publication Guidelines from the Ministry of Internal Security (KDN) which landed in his email in-box (Mine too!)a few days ago. He notes that:

It is in Section 4 that the guidelines go into some specifics. The first sub-section is on writings and articles. Prohibited items include racial and religious prejudice. Okay. Sedition includes all of the former as well as (commentary on) politics and the economy that are contrary to "national principles". So, if the economy is bad you can't say it. Then comes the use of vulgar language. Okay, all you writers out there, if you are writing a story about construction workers, vegetable sellers or politicians in the Parliament, make sure they use proper language and anatomically correct descriptions. We're Malaysians, we don't swear. And, no sexual acts, please. By the way, mystery and mystical stories that conflict with Islamic principles are also not allowed.

The sender of the email was most tickled (though maybe that's the wrong choice of word) that sex-toys seemed to be listed under publications!!

Now for the Good News!

There has been a measurable cultural change in society’s commitment to literary reading. In a cultural moment when we are hearing nothing but bad news, we have reassuring evidence that the dumbing down of our culture is not inevitable ...

says Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, in The New York Times. A new report, Reading on the Rise: A New Chapter in American Literacy, shows that adults are now reading more literary works than they did previously.

Factors that helped reverse "the perilous decline" (recorded in the Endowment's previous study four years ago) include a programme called The Big Read :

... to encourage communities to champion the reading of particular books, like “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald and “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston.

(The complete list of books for The Big Read is here and would make a great guide for anyone wanting to make a start on becoming a more convinced reader - do take a look!)

Also :

Oprah Winfrey’s book club, the huge popularity of book series like “Harry Potter” and Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight,” as well as the individual efforts of teachers, librarians, parents and civic leaders to create “a buzz around literature that’s getting people to read more in whatever medium.”

And we in Malaysia, of course, have something very important to learn from this!

Clarissa's List of Books to Look Out For

Clarissa Tan recently researched a piece for the Singapore Business Times about some of the book highlights of the year with the help of local book distributors, and she sent me a copy - here 'tis :

1. A Mercy by Toni Morrison November 2008 Fiction
A powerful tragedy distilled into a jewel of a masterpiece by the Nobel Prize–winning author of Beloved and, almost like a prelude to that story, set two centuries earlier.

2. Once On A Moonless Night by Dai Sijie January 2009 Fiction
Beguiling and ambitious, this new novel by the author of "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress", is ostensibly a search for an ancient text, and a love story. But beneath that is a haunting tale about language and identity, about the shifting layers of history under the confusing surface of Chinese life and politics, with a final Buddhist twist.

3. A Mad Desire To Dance by Elie Wiesel February 2009 Fiction
From Elie Wiesel, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and one of our fiercest moral voices, a provocative and deeply thoughtful new novel about a life shaped by the worst horrors of the twentieth century and one man’s attempt to reclaim happiness.

4. Tales Of Freedom by Ben Okri April 2009 Fiction
In Tales of Freedom, the Booker Prize winning novelist brings both poetry and story together in a fascinating new form, using writing and image pared down to their essentials, where haiku and story meet.

5. Nobody Move by Dennis Johnson April 2009 Fiction
From the National Book Award–winning, bestselling author of Tree of Smoke comes a provocative thriller set in the American West. Touched by echoes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, Nobody Move is at once an homage to and a variation on literary form.

6. My Father's Tears and Other Stories by John Updike June 2009 Short Stories
John Updike’s first collection of new short fiction since 2000 finds the author in a valedictory mood as he mingles narratives of his native Pennsylvania with stories of New England suburbia and of foreign travel. In sum, American experience from the Depression to the aftermath of 9/11 finds reflection in these glittering pieces of observation, remembrance, and imagination.

7. Making an Elephant by Graham Swift June 2009 Autobiography
In his first ever work of nonfiction, the Booker Prize–winning author gives us a highly personal book: a singular and open-spirited account of a writer’s life. A journey through place and time, conversations and encounters, Making an Elephant brims with charm and candor, an alertness to experience, and a true engagement with words—in short, with what it means to believe that writing and reading are an essential part of living.

8. Jeff In Venice, Death In Varanasi by Geoff Dyer April 2009 Fiction
A beautifully told story of erotic love and spiritual yearning, "Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi" is playful, stylish, sensual, comic, ingenious and utterly captivating. It confirms Geoff Dyer as one of Britain's most exciting and original writers.

Jeff Atman, a journalist, is in Venice to cover the opening of the Venice Art Biennale. He's expecting to see a load of art, go to a lot of parties and drink too many bellinis. He's not expecting to meet the spellbinding Laura, who will completely transform his few days in the city. Another city, another assignment: this time on the banks of the Ganges in Varanasi. Amid the crowds, ghats and chaos of India's holiest Hindu city a different kind of transformation lies in wait.

9. The Girl With Glass Feet by Ali Shaw May 2009 Fiction
Strange things are happening on the remote and snowbound archipelago of St Hauda's Land. Unusual winged creatures flit around icy bogland; albino animals hide themselves in the snow-glazed woods; jellyfish glow in the ocean's depths… and Ida MacLaird is slowly turning into glass. A mysterious and frightening metamorphosis has befallen Ida – she is slowly turning into glass, from the feet up. She returns to St Hauda's Land, where she believes the glass first took hold, in search of a cure. The Girl with Glass Feet is a dazzlingly imaginative and gripping first novel, a love story to treasure.

Also out this year:

Simon Mawer - The Glass Room

Patrick McCabe - The Holy City

T.C. Boyle - The Women

Nami Mun - Miles from Nowhere

Anita Brookner - Strangers

Daniyal Mueenuddin - In Other Rooms, Other Wonders

Kazuo Ishiguro - Nocturnes

A notable omission, I reckon, is Robert Bolano's 2666 - surely one of the most talked about books at the moment.

To add a little Malaysian flavour (of the overseas published kind) to the list I'd also have added Tash Aw's Map of the Invisible World, out in April, and Tinling Choong's Yuyu and the Banyan Tree which I believe should also be out in 2009.

There are also interesting lists of upcoming goodies in The Independent and The Times.

What books are you most looking forward to?

Dina's Book Finds a Home

I was so happy to read this just now on Facebook and hope you will please pass the message on :

A WRITER'S LIFE BY DINA ZAMAN

It’s the usual intellectuals speaking and writing countless essays, but what happened to the young? These voices must be captured in print and documented.

I AM Muslim – Other Voices. Yours. About two years ago, that book was published. Truth is, the book was a collection of essays written for a column I helmed at a news portal. That was around 2004/2005.

Covering Muslim life for two years was one of the most fulfilling times of my life. The people I met and shared adventures with – and, yes - the love letters I received from the public were indeed interesting, to say the least.

The column was not just me writing weekly essays. I had friends and readers who wrote in and contributed what they thought, and how they viewed their faith and being Muslims.

Mahathir Yasin, Idlan Zakaria, Menj, Shufiyan Shukur, to name a few, wrote wonderful essays. I even had an anonymous contributor who sent me emails in point form on his ‘militant’ childhood, which became a rather short-lived series for the column, titled Memoirs of a Militant Schoolboy.

Jordan Macvay, a Canadian Muslim, wrote an entertaining piece on polygamy, and had quite a number of irate Malay men baying for his blood. In short, these voices made the column a very lively place.

I had promised the published writers and other writers who were interested in contributing to the column that one day, they would all appear in a book.

I shopped the idea around, and not many bought the idea of young Muslim voices with ideas, opinions, and humour writing about their experiences. Even my publisher, bless him, was quite reserved in his enthusiasm.

Who can blame them? Selling books, especially local books, is not a money generating machine.

It took two years to find a publisher. You just have to believe in the product. I only know this: all these voices are more important than mine.

I started a blog, but with all due respect to the writers who sent in their contributions, the blog went pear shaped and became this confessional “I sinned therefore I repented and now I am a wonderful Muslimah”.

In recent years we have noted a slow silencing of diverse Muslim voices. While there were many forums and public debates that piqued the public’s interest, there seemed to be a process of publicising one voice only. Theirs. Not yours. Ours.

We have the usual intellectuals speaking and writing countless essays, but what happened to the young? Their opinions don’t matter?

These voices must be captured in print and documented, because (well in my lofty moments I do think of these) they could be clues towards public policy and grassroots NGO activity. They could highlight issues and dilemmas we need to address.

So now we have a publisher. Young, out-of-the-box, and thinks “hey, this is important to my generation and the generations below. This is our voices that must be heard”.

Hence, this project. ZI Publications will be publishing I Am Muslim Too: Other Voices and is calling for contributions from the public.

The criteria to be published are as follows:

(1) Quality writing. I don’t care how pious you are, if your writing does not come to mark, it’s sayonara.

(2) 1,000 words in either English or Bahasa Malaysia. It can be a poem, too.

(3) It does not matter if you are conservative, moderate, liberal, confused. We want to hear about your lives. It can be funny, sad, angry, calm – we just want good writing. (Yes, funny is good.)

(4) You do not have to be a Muslim or Malaysian to be part of this project. Yes, you can be a space alien, but you must write about your friendships and experiences in Muslim Malaysia. Bad or good.

(5) Redemption stories will not be entertained unless they really are good stories. If this is one of those confessionals I mentioned earlier, please submit it to a tacky tabloid.

(6) We welcome art/cartoon strips.

(7) All submissions must be addressed to info@zipublications.com.my together with your particulars. Deadline: Feb 28.

So come on. What are you waiting for? You’re ready to be heard.

The writer works for a non-profit organisation. Email her at dzawriterslife@gmail.com

Janet's Continuing Love Affair

Ubud Readers and Writers Festival director Janet de Neefe is interviewed in the Australian about her continuing love affair with Bali, the sequel she's writing to her memoir/cookbook Fragrant Rice, which will be :

... a classic tale tracing three generations of women: her Balinese mother-in-law, herself and her two daughters, centring on the traditional v the modern

and of course about the festival which this year runs from October 7 to 11 with the theme Sorrow and Joy :

Now in its sixth year, the festival will run , examining the ability of the human spirit to triumph over adversity. Complemented by the culinary tradition of languorous meals served in magnificent settings, the litfest will feature the customary seminars, debates, book launches, panels, performances and workshops. Debates on environmental issues and the rise of fundamentalism - touching on Islam in Indonesia, globalisation, censorship of the media, world poverty and the effects of the country's new anti-pornography law - will all be par for the course. De Neefe encourages local writers where she can and supports efforts to have Indonesian writing translated into English for publication overseas.

The line up is (as usual) amazing and (tentatively, because we all know how these things go) :

Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee, Wole Soyinka, Hari Kunzru, Ed Husain, 2007 Orange prizewinner Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Nuruddin Farah and Australians Geraldine Brooks and Michelle de Kretser will all be present.

I hope the publicity in Australia will pull in some much needed sponsorship money for the festival which Janet, and her husband Ketut Suardana, put a great deal of their own money into.

Want to attend the festival this year? Hint - now's a good time to book your AirAsia cheapie flight!

(Pic is a photo I took at the festival last year.)

The Return of Pooh

Eighty years on, Winnie the Pooh will be returning to Hundred Acre Wood in a sequel to be written by David Benedictus and illustrated by Mark Burgess. The book will be launched in October ... just in time to be a Christmas hit.

I am a great Pooh fan but he wasn't actually part of my childhood since I only discovered him from (less deprived!) friends at secondary school, but even at that advanced age, I was delighted by the books. And especially loved this poem :

The more it snows - tiddly pom
The more it snows - tiddly pom
The more it goes - tiddly pom
The more it goes - tiddly pom
On snowing

And nobody knows - tiddly pom
And nobody knows - tiddly pom
How cold my toes - tiddly pom
How cold my toes - tiddly pom
Are growing.

I was (and am) a simple soul!