Twan and Tash the Litera-nauts

I haven't blogged about a lot of great stuff in past issues of Off The Edge, partly I think because I feel so guilty about not having written anything for it in quite a while, other stuff getting in the way. (So sorry, Jason.)

This issue brings Ann Lee's piece about our two literary space pioneers, Tash Aw and Tan Twan Eng. (I'm sure you can work out which is which in the cartoon!) This piece, putting both authors and their work side by side was positively aching to be written.

And as Ann points out quite rightly, getting onto the Booker longlist is a far harder feat for Malaysians to achieve than being sent off into space:

After all, you can still pay for that to happen.

The astronaut analogy works very well, with Tash as:

... the Neil Armstrong of Malaysian authors hitting the high numbers of international readers.

As Ann notes too, it's a real shame that there has been no official acknowledgment of their achievement (a phone call from the PM would have been nice!), and the academic community haven't quite yet got round to highlighting their achievements either. Are their works too recent to be considered real literature, perhaps?

I enjoyed Ann's reviews of the two books very much, and found myself agreeing with much she said, as well as enjoying the way she writes. (Hurray for this magazine which gives reviewers the space to do a decent job.)

There's some lovely ephemera about Twan in an accompanying column, especially about his early love of Enid Blyton. (Hey, I loved Mallory Towers too!). There's also a I'd-laugh-if-it-wasn't-so-bloody-tragic column detailing just how hard it is to track down a copy of The Gift of Rain in various branches of MPH. (Remember Glenda's lament?)

There's much else that's really good in the magazine. Siti Nurhaliza looks natural and gorgeous in Vinod J Nair's photographs. Nazim Isa's photographs of the Roma of Sulukule are fascinating. I missed Sharon Chin's exhibition on banned books and am grateful for the pictures and review. Amir Muhammad's Malaysian Politicians say the Darndest Things gets a two page plug. And Ann Lee pops up again reviewing the Ubud Writers' and Readers' Festival and I get to hear about some of the bits I missed.

And much much more ... including one ad I think many of you will be interested in. Time Out, that icon of London culture has been steadily extending its' reach to other world capitals, is now coming to Kuala Lumpur and is looking for freelance journalists and contributors!

Postscript

Irene Q has problems finding the books she wants at MPH too. Book retailing is one of the trickiest businesses to be in, which is why it requires really on the ball staff!

Texts Alive!

We won't get more than about 30 people, I told Pang as we arranged a semi-circle of chairs in an intimate semi-circle for our Night of the Living Texts event. Fifty, tops. This was all fixed up so late, we haven't had a whole lot of publicity out, and that mainly on blogs and e-groups.

Besides, I thought, how many people will turn up mid-week for a literary gathering?

An awful lot as it turned out! I didn't take a head count, but probably around 100 people turned up, the numbers swelled even more when the Philosphy class that Hishamuddin Rais was teaching next door ended.

Many of the usual "readings" crowd (our bohemian beatnik chic Saturday afternoon arty-farties) showed up. Others were blogfriends - some materialising into physical form for the first time including Fei and Joshua. Still others were drawn in by the link with the British Council Reading across Cultures: Teaching English Through Literature conference.

Bernice Chauly (who set up the whole "readings" thing) was there, and I felt so happy to see her.

It was a very huggy kissy start to the evening, interspersed by moments of logistical panic.

And so on to the "show":

Roger Robinson was just the best opening act we could have hoped for, and he set a standard (particularly in terms of dramatising his work!). He read a very funny prose piece in which there was a character called Sharon, also known as Virgin Island (so of course, this Sharon now has a new nickname). Would have loved the opportunity to hear more and vow to track down Roger at a reading when I'm back in London.

Roger's Trinadadian accent just melts me, reminding me of old friends I miss so much ...

John McRae introduced our second speaker, and I appreciated his words very much. John was involved in the launch of the Skoob Pacifica series (a very important imprint which really launched local writing), and said that at the time of publication there was little interest in South-East Asian writing in Europe. And now the situation has totally changed and Malaysian writers are being published in the UK. Case in point ...


... Tan Twan Eng, whose immensely readable first novel (I know'cos I couldn't put it down!) The Gift of Rain, set in Penang, is out in hardback on March 8th, and paperback May 20th. This was Twan's first public reading. He choose the opening pages of the novel which hint at great mysteries to be unravelled. This audience should be hooked enough to buy it!

Louise Doughty read from her short story Doikitsa which appeared in New Writing 13, (also, I think she said, part of her Novel Fires in the Dark about the European Roma ) in which an elderly woman lies dying in her wagon.

Our second Malaysian author of the evening, Kam Raslan, read a couple of naughty passages from Confessions of an Old Boy and created a lot of laugher.

We took a break then, and folks wandered down to the Bau-Bau cafe which had opened specially for the night to sell us drinks. Much literary networking happening in the meantime.

Then Dina Zaman was up to read from I Am Muslim. Post-David Frost experience perhaps, this is a much more confident Dina than I've seen read before. Enjoyed the voices in her pieces, especially the piece was the possessed masseuse.

Isagani Cruz read a condensed version of one of his plays - a monologue about a zarzuela (traditional Filippino music theatre) performer. Very nice indeed! And I particularly loved the way his character has a little gossip about a certain writer called Isagani! (And we were talking only the other day about writers who put themselves into their fiction.)

Taiwanese poet Ke Hua Chen ended the evening for us with a poem in Mandarin with English translation. (And we finally got a chance to hear his version of the poem as song lyrics on CD when Pang came back from talking to friends outside to press the right button!)

To all who read, to all who came, to Pang for all his help, to the British Council for lending us their writers, to young Nic for letting himself be bullied into a whole lot of jobs, the biggest possible THANK YOU!!!!

Central Market turned out to be a great location and I am beginning to have lots of ideas about how we can make use of that space for other events of this kind ...

Postscript

Do go and read Jordan's post too. Ruby Ahmad says she had a great time and has some great pics of everyone ... except me. *sob*. BP doesn't want anyone to sell him a book ... and is the third person I've come across with a story to tell of the gents loo. (At least he only found someone smoking in there, Jordan and Nic had much worse ... or better, depending on which way you look at things.) And if you read Chinese, you can tell me what Fei and Joshua have written!