An Uncle’s Legacy

What did I learn from Uncle Shah? ... To be proud of being a writer because when it is done well, it touches the lives of others. To be fearless when stepping into unfamiliar territory because you never know what you will find. To be stubborn and stand up for what you believe in because, at the end of the day, that’s what really matters.

Dzof Azmi pays tribute to his uncle, Shahriza Hussein, in Starmag today with a very moving piece.

I was never sure how much of the story in Legacy was fact, and how much fiction. Shahriza actually denied that it was his own family history being retold, when I asked him about it. But  Dzof says :

Legacy is based on what he had learned about our family, passed on through the generations. My grandfather (Uncle Shah’s father) had once told me that if it wasn’t for his grandfather being cheated of some inheritance, we would still be part of a royal lineage. The novel goes some way in explaining what could have happened.

I like the way that Shah asked Dzoh to write the screenplay. The novel would translate wonderfully to the big screen, so I do hope he takes up the challenge.

Shahriza Hussein Passes Away

I just received the sad news from his daughter, Narissa, that Legacy author Shahriza Hussein passed away on the 23rd January following a fall. He was admitted into ICU under sedation and then passed away two days later. Narissa says that the ultimate cause of his death was attributed to heart failure, and he passed away peacefully.

Shahriza had been unwell for some time, and those of you who came to Readings@Seksan in June 2008 will remember how frail he was then and how his friend, Yew Lie, read for him.  (Mind you, he was chain smoking in the background.)

My love and condolence goes to his family. I had not known him or his wife Sermsuk long, but they became immediate friends when I went to the house to collect a copy of his novel. I liked his slight curmudgeonliness (which reminded me of my own grouchy, but funny, other half), his keen intelligence, and the mischievous twinkle in his eyes.

Legacy remains HIS legacy, and it is a local novel well worth reading.

The plot is set in motion by the killing of Birch, and his pocket watch falling into the hands of Mastura, a member of the Perak royal family, who vows to return it to the rightful owners. It follows Mastura and her descendants through 80 tumultuous years of Malaysian history, culminating in Independence. 

One of the great pleasures of the book is the way it brings alive real historical characters and pivotal scenes from Malaysia's past - here's Birch marooned on a sandbank in the Perak River,  here's Swettenham at Carcosa, here's a meeting about the drainage problems of Kampong Baru.  The novel is meticulously researched and he quite effortlessly opens a door and lets you slip back in time. I learned such a lot and am deeply grateful. 

But it is no stuffy historical tome, and there is plenty of dramatic incident to keep the plot rolling nicely. There's also a very pleasing old school correctness about the prose - the author cared deeply about his craft and for the English language.  (Incidentally,  was also an educationalist and wrote the 322 Communicative English language syllabus that was used in all secondary schools.)

If there is a problem with the book it is that the plot is rather tugged along, because of the authors desire to cover all significant historical events. My own feeling is that it really should have been published as two books and more time and space given to fleshing out the characters. "Pare back, and deepen" is what I would have said to Shahriza if I'd been sitting on the other side of the editor's desk. Sometimes too the book doesn't wear its historical didacticism very well - there are substantial chunks of background at the beginnings of each chapter which are a bit indigestible.

But I do think that this is one of the most important locally written books of the past few years, and I hope that in the long term it wins the recognition that it deserves.

You can find an extract here and Amir Muhammad wrote an excellent review of the novel.

I still have some copies of the book to sell, the money goes to Sermsuk, and I will bring them to readings on 30th January.

Award Winners and Joget in June

It was a huge turnout for Readings@Seksan yesterday despite the other exciting things going on in town (KLue's Urbanscapes, and the poetry slam later the same evening at KLPAC) and despite serious traffic disruptions caused by the trimming of trees in the area.

As you can see - our readers shared quite a number of literary awards between them!

Sri Lankan author Elmo Jayawardena started us off reading a (very) short extract from Sam's Story - his Graetian Prize winning novel told from the viewpoint of a mentally-retarded young man who came to work in Elmo's household. He had to hurry away after the reading to get back to the airport where he is training pilots on the flight simulator!

Most of us know Lydia Teh as a non-fiction writer, and indeed she recently won the Star-Popular award in that category for her hilarious take on Malaysian life Honk If You're Malaysian. But today she read a short story she had written, a very beautiful and magical tale called Moon Scars which was originally published in Yellow Post.

Award-winning journalist Jacqueline Ann Surin read from her new collection of her columns Shape of a Pocket, one of several opinion pieces that had been "spiked" i.e rejected by her editor for being too controversial.

The piece opens with a personal story about how she has to argue to get the words "No religion" on her MyKad, in a country where all citizens are expected to be neatly pigeonholed by religious belief and race. She then goes on to talk about the difficulties faced by Muslim Malaysians in changing their religion if they so wish, taking in, along the way, of course, the famous Lina Joy case.

The second half of the afternoon was nicely bracketed with some traditional music with attitude from the lads of Dewangga Sakti. Was it only me who wanted to get up and joget?

I really would like musical interludes like this to become a regular feature, so if you are a (good!) musician and would like to play for us, unplugged, get in touch with me.

I was so glad that Shahriza Hussein felt well enough to come along. I've just started reading his historical novel Legacy and am greatly impressed with its ability to transport me back to (19th Perak. The research is impeccable and the writing very good indeed. (Will let you know more about it when I'm further along.) Shahriza did correct me with a twinkle in his eye when I said (based on the press coverage so far) that this was a novel partly based on his own family history. It is entirely fiction, he declares. Which is fine because we really only need to enjoy the book!

(I still have some copies for sale for just RM30 - let me know if you want one.)

Koo Yew Lie did the reading for Shahriza as he had a bad cough. She read an extract from the beginning where British Resident J.W.W. Birch and his party are taking a break (complete with china teapot!) on a journey up the Perak River in a small flotilla of three boats. The next day they will be in the territory of a certain Datuk Maharaja Lela ... (Malaysian readers know what comes next!)

Two little asides here :

1) Yew Lie was a friend I made when she came over to the U.K. college (Marjons) where I was teaching, and until yesterday we hadn't seen each other for 18 years. She's now an associate professor at UKM.

2) It's interesting, isn't it that both Shahriza's book and Chew-Siah Tei's Little Hut of Leaping Fishes open at virtually the same point of time (Autumn, 1875)?

I was extremely grateful to Clarissa Tan for making this long journey up by bus especially for this event. She is an amazing young writer and a couple of my friends afterwards confessed that they had felt themselves tearing up as she read her piece, The Visit, that won the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize : the absolute honesty of the piece touched hearts.

Clarissa says that she is now at work on her first novel and I am really look forward to seeing that.

Star-Popular Award runner-up in the fiction category for Confessions of An Old Boy: The Dato Hamid Adventures, Kam Raslan has been continuing the stories each month on the pages of Off the Edge. He had us all laughing again at Hamid's musings on the Tin Mine disco (which was at the KL Hilton and the place to hang out in the '80's).

Kam is soon off to the Byron Bay Writer's Festival, sponsored partly by the Australian High Commission. (Bless 'em.) The world needs to meet Dato Hamid.

It was a great afternoon. I really thank all who came and cheered on writers, all who read their work, all who played wonderful music, all who helped set up and clear up. I particularly thank Seksan for use of his lovely space, and Shahril Nizam for designing our blog poster.

Our next Readings@Seksan will be July 26th, and the line up (I hope!) will include Fahmi Fadzil and Azmyl Yunor performing their famous Wayang Buku.

Shahriza's Legacy

First time author Shahriza Hussein is featured today in Starmag's Reads Monthly supplement in a piece by Brigitte Rozario.

I had the great pleasure of meeting Shahriza a few weeks ago when I was invited over to his house in P.J. to pick up a copy of his book, Legacy, after a mutual friend had put us in touch.

His wife, Sermsuk, totally seduced me with the Thai dishes she had prepared for lunch. And when Shahriza joined us, these felt like friends I'd always known. We found a lot of common ground talking about language teaching and curriculum design and shaking our heads at the state of the English language in Malaysia. And we talked books of course. Shah may be a little frail but he has such an engagingly wicked twinkle in his eyes, and very sharp intellect.

(I really look forward to meeting up with them both again and I'm hoping, fingers crossed, to get him along to readings@seksan's soon so that some of you have the chance to meet him too.)

The Legacy (published - very handsomely! - in Singapore by Editions Didier Millet) is a large, historical novel set in Perak between 1875 when British resident James W.W. Birch is killed, and Merdeka in 1957. But this is no dry tome as it weaves in incidents from Shahriza's own family history which came to him in the form of stories told by his parents and grandparents. This is the blurb :

After Perak Resident James Birch is murdered in 1875, his pocket watch comes into the possession of Mastura, a member of the Perak royal family and an intimate friend of the late Resident. Mastura, devastated by his death, decides to keep the watch as a talisman against the uncertain times ahead, vowing to return it one day. This novel is the story of Mastura and her descendents, as they make their way through 80 tumultuous years of colonised Malaya until, with Merdeka, the talisman can finally be returned with honour. It is a story of courage, fortitude, faith, and love.

The novel is reviewed here by Sivamani Rasiah who declares that it :

... will touch a collective Malaysian chord.

You can read an extract from it on Victoria Institution's website (it's nice the school is so proud of its literary heritage!).

James Hipkiss also wrote an excellent article about the author and novel which appeared in April in the New Straits Times. He says that Shahriza:

... writes the most beautiful English, and tells a fascinating story.

I really look forward to reading it.