Ioannis:The Local Foreigner

... the longing to travel was there and I wanted a job that allowed me to factor in travelling. Writing has worked that way for me. It also forces me to observe a country a bit more closely than I might otherwise. ...  I longed to have a different experience and tap into people with different cultural roots.

Malaysia-based New Yorker Ioannis Gatsiounis is interviewed in Starmag by Sandra Low about his journalism and his books : Beyond The Veneer and Velvet & Cinder Blocks.

He talks about how he broke into journalism in Malaysia - and can you imagine, he couldn't even afford a handphone when he started and used to use a payphone at KL Sentral to do his interviews!  There's dedication.

And he claims to be a 'temporary resident" here, but uses the all important "we" when he talks about the country, so  I can't see him leaving any time soon.

Ioannis blogs here.

Ioannis at Borders

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.

ZI Publications' Double Book Launch

You're invited to a double book launch by ZI Publications :

I, Too, Am Malay - Zaid Ibrahim's bestselling book Saya Pun Melayu has been translated and is now available in English...

&

Velvet & Cinder Blocks - New York native Ioannis Gatsiounis' debut collection of short stories. (Author of Beyond The Veneer: Malaysia ’s Struggle for Dignity and Direction.)

Join us for this rare double book launch event - the event features both Datuk Zaid and Ioannis discussing their respective books, a Q&A session, autograph-signing, photo snapping....and yes, book buying too!

ALL ARE WELCOME. (Limited space/chairs, so do come early...)

Soft drinks and light snacks provided. (There're LOTS of restaurants downstairs for a proper meal afterwards!)

Details

Date: Friday, Oct 16th, 2009

Venue: PJLA, Jaya One, Jalan Universiti, PJ.

Time: 7.30pm

About the Books :

I, Too, Am Malay, is a collection of Zaid Ibrahim's innermost thoughts on values, attitudes and how future politics in Malaysia must be based on that which is positive and unites all ethnic groups. Tackling controversial issues such as Ketuanan Melayu (Malay Supremacy), the rule of law, and the role of the monarchy, Zaid speaks candidly but sincerely about the way forward for democracy in this country currently plagued by political crises.

A successful corporate attorney who created the nation's biggest law firm despite his humble origins in a village in Kelantan, Zaid's journey as a lawyer, politician and philanthropist is depicted here--from his resignation as a Minister and his sacking from UMNO, a party of which he had been a member for 23 years, to his analysis of the current Prime Minister's ability to restore the rakyat's confidence in the government.

I, Too, Am Malay, reveals the hopes and dreams of a Malay who sees the future of the Malays in a refreshed democracy that anchors on common sense and a profound understanding of their place in a world far larger than their own.

Velvet & Cinder Blocks - Gatsiounis' début collection of stories captures the spirit of the individual who struggles to define himself in a world where the idea of identity is both concrete and perpetually fleeting, a world where loyalties, friendships and family ties can alter in an instant. A young painter follows a false prophet deep into a desert. A pious rape victim struggles to see past her faith in the aftermath of a tsunami. A Chinese-American’s Chineseness is put to the test in multiracial Malaysia . A young Malay caretaker and his lone guest at a remote guesthouse struggle to find direction and compassion in an era of stark civilisational divides.

With these 10 well imagined and decadently engrossing stories, Gatsiounis offers us a timely, penetrating meditation on intimacy, alienation and triumph in the post-9/11 world.

If you want to attend then you must RSVP info@zipublications.com.my or call 603-78850020.

Here's the map :

Ioannis Interviewed

Fiction is something I’ve quietly been pursuing alongside the news analysis. Media is seductive in that it offers an immediate outlet to voice your concerns. But it’s not well suited to explore how relationships between individuals and communities play out against the backdrop of the larger world. And I was finding post-9/11, post-Iraq that those two realms—the personal on the one hand, and the external, which has become increasingly politicised—were growing inextricable. Fiction was better suited to explore that relationship.

Malaysian-based American writer and freelance foreign correspondent, Ioannis Gatsiounis, talks to Eric Forbes of MPH about his new collection of stories Velvet and Cinder Blocks.

And here he is too on this week's Fairly Current Show, talking to Fahmi Fadzil :

... about writing stories, living in and responding to all things Malaysian, and his most recent collection of writings ...

And notice how he slips into saying "we" when he talks about Malaysia, a sure sign of being hooked by the country.

Anyway, started reading the book today ...

Saturday's Star Studded Cast of Readers

Yesterday's Readings@Seksan went off well - the audience a bit on the small side though, mainly I think because many people are still away because of the school hols, and because there are a lot of Hari Raya parties going on. Haslina Usman couldn't make it (but will another time) and I was lucky that I managed to co-opt in a couple of last minute readers.


First up was Karina Bahrin who recently had her first story, the quirky A Woman in Five Pieces, published in Urban Odysseys. She read part of a new story The Unofficial Wife and it sounded excellent. She is currently working on a short story collection, which I think is very good news for all of us.

Sufian Abas (below) turned up with his new protogee, a young poet called Mimi Morticia (above) whose first collection Tangerin & Nicotin (the title is virtually the same in English) he has just published. The official launch is actually today at Central Market Annexxe.

I was so happy to be able to rope her in for the event. She also read a very short short story from Sufian's new collection Matanya Teleskop, Hatinya Kapal Dalam Botol Kaca (badly translated as His/Her Eye's a Telescope, His/Her Heart's a Ship in a Glass Bottle.)


Uthaya Sankar (below) is an award-winning writers of short stories. (He says he prefers the form because he has a short attention span, which seems as good a reason to me as any!). He last read at Seksan's last August and today gave us part of his story Nayagi, Mistress of Destiny in Malay and his friend, Monash lecturer Symala Dhoraisungam Samuel (pictured below after Uthaya) read the English version which appears in an anthology called Sea of Rainbows, edited by Muhammad Haji Salleh and translated by Institut Terjemahan Negara Malaysia.


Shanon Shah (below) is an award-winning singer-songwriter, a passionate human-rights advocate (particularly when it comes to issues of gender, sexuality, HIV/AIDS and Islam). He has written for both print and online publications (including The New Straits Times, Kakiseni.com, and Muslim WakeUp.com). He is also a playwright - his debut play Aircon has now had two sell-out runs.

Two of his essays have recently been published in collections : The Khutbah Diaries appears in New Malaysian Essays 2, and today he read the opening of Muslim2Muslim, his very powerful piece that appears in the anthology Body2Body, which starts with the furor surrounding Animah Wudud's appearance at an international conference in KL.

I am twisting Shanon's arm to come back and sing for us another time!

Remember me telling you some time back about the rather "Graham-Greenish" (my desciption, not his) novel Ioannis Gatsiounis was working on? I read a draft of it some time back, and am very happy to learn that in a much trimmed back form it appears as a novella called The Guest House in his new collection of stories Velvet and Cinder Blocks: I'm really looking forward to re-encountering it. Ioannis read us his story The Rat Tooth - extremely good.

Amir Muhammad, bless him, when he knew that we needed a last minute reader ran off to a nearby cyber-cafe to print off an extract from his new book on Yasmin Ahmad's films to read for us. Although of course the main focus is on the films, I like the fact that the commentary in the side bars takes off in interesting directions.


Afterwards, Chet, Leon and I went over to D'lish for a bite and to toast our birthday boy, Eric Forbes (above).

Thanks to all who came and the brave souls who read. Thanks to Seksan for the beautiful space, and to Jess and Kenny who came early to help me set up.

Keep your eyes on this space because there will be Readings again soon - just I may be away end of Oct because of the Singapore Writers' Festival so dates may have to be moved round.

Ioannis Turns to Fiction

Another local author deserving a cheer is Ioannis Gatsiounis with his collection of short stories entitled Velvet & Cinder Blocks. (Thank you ZI Publications for sending me a copy!) Here's the blurb :

Ioannis Gatsiounis’s debut collection of short stories brilliantly captures the spirit of the individual who struggles to define himself in a world where the idea of identity is both concrete and perpetually fleeting, a world where loyalties, friendships and family ties can alter in an instant. A young painter follows a false prophet deep into a desert. A pious rape victim struggles to see past her faith in the aftermath of a tsunami. A Chinese-American’s Chineseness is put to the test in multi-racial Malaysia. A young Malay caretaker and his lone guest at a remote guest house struggle to find direction and compassion in an era of stark civilisational divides.

With these ten beautifully imagined and decadently engrossing stories, Gatsiounis offers us a timely, penetrating meditation on intimacy, alienation and triumph in the post 9/11 world.

(Click covers up to size to read.)

Ioannis' last book was, of course, Beyond the Veneer and some of you will have caught him reading from it at Readings@Seksan last year. (Susan Loone has a very good review of the book here.)

You can find his short story, Fathers, at QLRS.

O Oh!

You may remember the name O Thiam Chin from a long-time ago story about his struggle to sell his first self-published collection of stories Free Falling Man. Or you may have seen his stories in Silverfish New Writing 6, or Body2Body or on the QLRS website. Well now he has a new collection, Never Been Better, out with MPH, and it's blurbed by no other than Man Booker Prize-longlisted author of The Gift of Rain, Tan Twan Eng who calls it :

A collection of thought-provoking stories about the contemporary Asian family. O Thiam Chin is a promising writer.

The book is due to be launched in October, and O (isn't that a great family name for an author!) will be appearing at the Singapore Writers Festival.

Courting Controversy, Inviting the Surreal

There was no tree chopping, no pneumatic drills, no detours to mess up readings on Saturday ... just enough torrential rain to delay the start until folks could arrive. (We're jinxed, we really are. What will it be next month?) But in the end though, we got a fair sized crowd with a lot of people here for the first time. (Welcome!)

Animah shared the MC-ing with me, partly because she knows two of the readers as work colleagues and partly because - yes - I am tired of hearing myself and it's nice to relax, and Animah adds a touch of glamour, don't you think?

The first reader was Suflan Shamsuddin (above) whose book Reset has just been published by ZI publications. He read one chapter which was written in the form of an exchange of letters debating Malay privilege and the destiny of the NEP.

It was beautifully lucid and accessible piece, a difficult subject intelligently handled, and Suflan read very well.

Reset is actually being launched today (Tuesday) at 5.30 at Borders The Curve. (Go read the author's website for more about the book.)

Next was a reader I've been chasing to read for a long time - Uthaya Sankar SB. Best known for his controversial short stories, he read us a very surreal piece from his latest collection Rudra Avatara which featured (was struggling with the language barrier here) a cat in it which got burnt to death and then came back from the dead (because of course, it had 9 lives) and became some kind of a leader. (Someone please fill in gaps here.)

Paul Leslie Smith (also introduced by Animah and one of her colleagues) chose two contrasting episodes from his large historical novel Rainforest Tears set in Sarawak- the first lushly romantic, the second describing a harrowing scene of absolute violence as a mob takes revenge on a collaborators after WWII. The writing is very vivid indeed. (Sadly, there are no online links to send you to online. Hope the publisher - Marshall Cavendish works to fix this as authors deserve better!)

After the break Bernice read for us - this time a fiction piece but no less raw and moving than her poetry. She is collaborating on a collection of stories with with three other women writers, and of course will be appearing at the Ubud Readers and Writers Festival in October.

Ioannis Gatsiounis read in one of the first Readings (back in 2005!). He was torn whether to read fiction of non-fiction but in the end chose to read a piece from his first book with Beyond the Veneer - his review of Christopher Hitchen's book God is Not Great.

(Sensitive issues? What sensitive issues? We explored plenty of 'em this afternoon!)

The final reader was Rumaizah Abu Bakar one of the three contributors to News From Home and now some of her fiction and poetry has also been published in the latest edition of Elarti (copies of which Sufian was selling at the event.) Rumaizah read her intriguing short story Peppery affair about the romance of a pepper pot and kitchen knife.

So it was an afternoon in which controversy was courted and the surreal invited ... sounds just about the right mix for Merdeka!

Thanks to everyone who read and everyone who came. Thanks to Sek San for the beautiful venue. Thanks to Shahril Nizam for the poster. Thanks to those who helped set up and those who cleared away. Thanks to Animah for letting me nick her photos which are much better than mine. (The only one of mine above is the one of Uthaya.)

Readings will take a rest during Ramadan and be back 25th October with Preeta Samarasan and Sharmini Flint.

Update :

Please take a look at Sufian Abas' gobsmakingly gorgeous photos on Facebook.

Ioannis Between Covers

A terrible distraction popped into my mailbox yesterday in the form of a review copy of Ioannis Gatsiounis' Beyond the Veneer : Malaysia's Struggle for Dignity and Direction, which Philip Tatham of Monsoon Books had very kindly sent to me.

I only meant to have a quick dip into it over a cup of tea, but got completely sucked in and got no work done after that.

Ioannis is a freelance journalist, originally from New York and based in KL (and a friend I've not seen around for quite a while, come to think of it ...). His articles about Malaysia have appeared in a number of publications including Newsweek, The Washington Times, Al Jazeera, and Asia Times. He also writes fiction, and he is working on a (very Graham Green-ish!) novel.

This book is a collection of his articles covering the issues and events that lead to the "political tsunami" here in March 2008. (See the blurb and read sample chapters on the publisher's website here).

If I don't comment further on the pieces (apart from to say that I am finding them very well written and fascinating because the Malaysian political landscape is never dull!) it is because I feel unqualified to do so as a mentally lazy person who only really cares about books and trees and whether women are being prevented from wearing noisy high heels and lipstick.

But actually Ioannis does talk about books too.

He has a very nice review of Amir Muhammad's Politicians Say the Darndest Things among others, as well as a piece about a controversial book which almost didn't get written because it was so hard to buy the book (God is not Great : How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens).

I thought this part interesting ... and telling :

This was in a bookstore in majority-Muslim Malaysia's glittering symbol of modernity, the Petronas Towers. I had just been told by the sales clerk the store would not be carrying the title, (which as I write this is number three on the New York Times' nonfiction bestseller list).

Her face, framed by a powder blue headscarf, turned florid as her eyes clung to the computer screen. I requested to speak with a manager. The clerk ignored me. I asked again. The manager would inform me that members of Malaysia's Internal Security Ministry had swept through the store the day before and "requested" that the title be removed from the shelves.

"So there is no official ban?" I queried.

"No."

"So ... self-censorship?"

The manager glanced over her shoulder, "Religion is a sensitive issue in Malaysia."

"I understand that but should protecting religious sensitivities happen at the expense of free and open inquiry?" Put another way, should the rest of us be stunted intellectually because some people of faith are thought to be susceptible to intolerance?

She murmured, "It's not that we don't have the book, it's just we're not displaying it."

It was a subtle concession, and soon she was retrieving a copy from the back of the store. Book and receipt in hand, I hung a little longer than I might have on its sweeping subtitle, How religion poisons everything.

This bears out exactly what an audience member at the recent forum on book banning said about trying to buy one of Karen Armstrong's books (not a banned title) at the same bookstore.

You cannot blame the store, or its management (though it looks as if Ioannis would rather like to) but the intimidatory practices of the KDN who snoop around bookstores and ask staff to remove titles they don't approve of.

If a book is not banned officially (i.e. gazetted as such) then it should be freely available and bookstore staff not harassed, not forced to hide titles under the counter.

I have, incidentally seen Hitchen's book on sale openly in other bookshops, so it looks as if the frighteners are being put on this particular store.