Adeline's Apology

One sad story came to light a few days ago. Yusof Martin sent me a copy of two PDF files. One of Adeline Lee's piece Define Happiness from her first collection, Lethal lessons and Other Stories the other of a piece called Happiness by Sarah Provencal from Chicken Soup for the Teenager's Soul IV. The similarities between the two could not be written off to coincidence. Raman had already discovered two weeks previously and had destroyed all copies of the book. (His note about it is on the main page of his website.) Adeline has written an apology which is now up on the Silverfish website. If you bought the book and want your money back, then you can contact her for a refund. My sadness is actually threefold. I feel very sorry for the publisher who took a risk on a new writer that he saw a great deal of potential in. Secondly, although Adeline did something wrong and unbelievably stupid, she is just 18 and this is a tragic way for a writing career to end even before it has begun. She does have talent and I hope that she is able to pick herself up and keep writing ... and eventually regain our trust. Thirdly, I am so sad that this disease of appropriating someone else's material and passing it off as your own is so widespread in Malaysian society. What really can be done about it? Isn't this something that schools and other educational instituions should really be drumming into kids? In this case the situation has been handled entirely appropriately. Don't we wish that these people (here and here) had had the guts to make the public apology they owed us? Shouldn't that infamous poetry book have been withdrawn and pulped? Postscript :

It is a hard lesson to learn. Nevertheless, stealing other people’s written work is no less a crime than stealing their mobile phone, car or any other materialistic appendage you care to name. The more serious crime, I believe, is the ethical crime involved with plagiarising; the lack of thought that taking another person’s creative endeavour, publishing it as one’s own, gaining plaudits for it, might be wrong.

See Yusof Martin's take on the affair. The picture of the extracts from the two books comes from his blog.

Amir Takes on Burgess

The Malayan Trilogy is a rambunctious and colourful performance of heat and lust, with the comic bathos of downpours always on hand to quench any potential high-mindedness. It should be made a compulsory text at school, as long as the teachers aren’t prudes who will latah at the lewd words.

Do go read Amir Muhammad's excellent review of Burgess' The Malayan Trilogy which was in The Malay Mail yesterday. it's so good to see the book reaching a new generation of Malaysians and influencing the writing here (both Preeta Samarasan and Shih-Li Kow have named it as one of their favourite reads about the country).

While you're on his blog, do take a look at the other reviews of Malaysian books there including Lethal Lesson and Other Stories by Adeline Lee Zhia Ern, and Adeline Loh's Peeing in the Bush. (Too many Adeline's?!)

Adeline's Debut

Another of Raman's protogees is interviewed in The New Straits Times today.

Max Koh talks to Adeline Lee Zhia Ern who is just 18 years old and has just publish her first collection of stories, Lethal Lesson And Other Stories, with Silverfish. The book was launched at the bookshops tenth anniversary celebrations last weekend.

It's good to see so much enthusiasm for writing and I hope we hear more of this young lady.