Link with Harlequin

More in Starmag today on the move by KarnaDya Solutions Sdn Bhd to bring chick lit into the Malay for a local readership. Dzireena Mahadzir discovers that the company is linking up with Harlequin (the world's biggest publisher of "women's fiction" - most usually romances) to translate titles from its Red Dress Ink imprint.

KarnaDya are targeting the youth market and, says marketing mananger Faiz Al-Shahab (left) :

... even though the culture and lifestyle in the books will be different from that of local publications, the plots and story lines will be entertaining to Malay readers. In terms of the storylines, I think Red Dress Ink offers more interesting content compared to local novels. From our experience in Malay fiction, it should be suitable for the local mindsets and tastes.

Dzireena isn't too impressed with the titles she picks up, though :

I found the language a bit stiff and writing didn’t flow very well. Some parts sounded like they were direct translations from English to Bahasa.

More International Chic Literature in BM?

I'm laughing because Literary Saloon on the other side of the world picked up a Malaysian publishing story before I did!

Bernama reports that more international chic literature will be translated into Bahasa Malaysia to cater for female Bahasa Malaysia medium readers. The company behind the move, apparently, - KaryaDya Publication Sdn Bhd.

I'm really happy to see more books from elsewhere translated into BM as readers deserve a wider choice of reading materials, and a little competition for local purveyors of popular fiction should help to raise standards. Should. It'll be interesting to see what actually does happen.

So ... what do you think, and what would you like to see translated for the BM reading market?

Fragrant Fiction

Lydia beat me to comment on a piece in the Star by Lee Tse Ling about the phenomena known as chick lit. (How nice it is to see some intelligent and intelligible comment about books on the pages of the paper - I just hope there will be more!)

Wondered though if you had come across (what is often said to be - I'm careful here) Indonesian equivalent of chick lit, labelled Sastra Wangi or Fragrant Literature by the Indonesian press? The fragrant part comes from the fact that these writers just happen to be young and beautiful. It's a label though that the writers themselves understandably shrug off as a cynical marketing ploy, a dismissal of the value of their work.

Writers Ayu Utami (who incidentally was one of the speakers at the KL Litfest), Dewi Lestari, (left) Djenar Mahesa Ayu and Nova Riyanti Yusuf (right) are enormously popular in Indonesia, their works reflect changing culture and aspirations and a new openness about sex - a taboo subject for the many in Indonesia's conservative society.

This isn't a literature to be dismissed lightly. As Inside Indonesia wrote of Ayu Utami's Saman:

Saman stands out amongst recent Indonesian fiction. Ayu's confident storytelling technique adequately carries the weight of a broad thematic scope, highlighting the full complexity of previously shunned issues such as female sexuality and the struggle between personal faith and political action.

Such a shame it is that although Malaysia and Indonesia are next-door neighbours, Indonesian literature doesn't find it's way over here. I'm still waiting to read Ayu's books ...

One wonders too why there isn't really an equivalent to Sastera Wangi here. Are Malaysian women less angry? Less concerned with putting their thoughts into fiction? Do they look over their shoulders more in case they offend the staus quo?

Malaysia has the romance novel. We should be content with that.

Let's all live happily ever after and not rock the boat.

More about Sastra Wangi from the BBC.

Related Post:

So You Want to Write Chick Lit? (8/10/05)

So You Want to Write Chick Lit?

Bookslut linked to a great article from Radar on how to write chick lit.

With this formula in hand writing the next Bridget Jones for your Nanowrimo novel could be a breeze!

Postscript

Fans of the genre will also enjoy this article that appeared in Melbourne's The Age some time ago.