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.

Sufian Sambal and The Art of BiblioStalking

Although he doesn’t write specifically for adolescents, I think Sufian Abas has the sort of weird and wonderful imagination needed to create the sort of romantic fantasies teenagers would be only too eager to lose themselves in. They would most certainly identify with Sufian’s love-sick characters, his delusional young men and wide-eyed young women, all wandering through a world lit by fluorescent strips and filled with dusty roads, stuffy LRT coaches and gaudy fast food joints. ... It’s a world that smells, sweetly and sharply, of rotting garbage and paint-stripper; a world where ceilings leak and the plumbing is jammed with blood and guts and broken hearts. A horrific world, a romantic world, a world swollen with unrequited love and lost dreams. Just the sort of landscape hyper-sensitive, melodramatic young adults like to pretend they inhabit.

Daphne Lee recommends Sufian Abas' new collection Matanya Teleskop, Hatinya Kapal Dalam Botol Kaca (The Eye is a Telescope, the Heart a Ship in a Glass Bottle)* as a teen-read in Starmag today, and says the stories are (and don't you just love this analogy) :

... delicious – like washing down extra spicy sambal with fizzy Fanta orange.

Abby Wong also writes a very enjoyable column about her bookish family. And how important it is to make sure that a future spouse is bookishly compatible!

(Incidentally, on the topic of judging compatability via the bookshelf, you might like to check out Rands in Repose on the topic of being a bookstalker.)
*Available at Silverfish Books, or email Sufian Abas at dvinecomdy@hotmail.com.

Indiepenance Day

July 4th is Indiepenance Day.

No, don't jump on me for a spelling error. You see Matahari Books and Stormkitchen will be launching New Malaysian Essays 2 and Elarti:ga respectively on that day. And Amir notes :

Those of you who will read Yusuf Martin's essay will appreciate the irony of the date.

They are having a barbecue house party to celebrate at 22 Lorong Rahim Kajai 13, Taman Tun Dr. Ismail. (This is the side of TTDI that is closer to the primary school than to the Pizza Hut). It starts at 8pm and ends at 11pm.

More about book and party here on Amir's blog.

Gravy for a Kept Woman?

I lifted this from Facebook :

Silverfishbooks, Sang Freud Press dan Sindiket Sol-jah, dengan berbesar hati menjemput anda sekalian pencinta fiksi berbahasa Melayu untuk bersama memeriahkan sidang pembacaan naskhah DUA LAUK dan PEREMPUAN SIMPANAN.

Date: Saturday, March 28, 2009
Time: 5:30pm - 8:00pm
Location: Silverfish Books, Jln Telawi, Bangsar Baru

Readers include:

D'ianadi
Wani Ardy
Taf 'Tifani' Teh
Ila Syazwani
Dila Raden
Wahida Rahim
Alina Abdullah

Further enquiries : dvinecomedy@hotmail.com

Congrats to Sufian Abas and friends for getting this new collection off the ground. The title is a wee bit hard to translate directly into English. (But this bluff-full Mat Salleh will have a go anyway and mangle a beautiful language.) Lauk means the dishes, curry and so on, eaten with rice as part of a Malay meal. A perumpuan simpanan is a kept-woman = mistress. And in this case it seems she's only been left two dishes to eat with her rice. (But why? I am intrigued to find out the answer to this! And if they are delicious lauk, such as I feel perfectly capable of cooking myself, should she still feel deprived?)

No doubt Sufian will be along to tell me I've got hold of the wrong end of the stick entirely. Never mind.

We also have Readings@Seksan that Saturday afternoon, but I will try to finish early so that anyone who wants to walk up the road to Silverfish will be able to get a second dose of things literary that afternoon!

Caught Live by Amir

I couldn't get to the readings Bernice organised at No Black Tie last Sunday so am thrilled to bits that Amir Muhammad took the trouble to video some of the performances. Those who haven't been able to get to the live events in KL or who live further afield (or overseas!) should enjoy these little tastes of Malaysian lit :



Bernice reads from her mini-book of short stories Lost in KL.



Preeta reads the (one and only) sex scene from Evening is the Whole Day.


Danny Lim reads for his Malaysian Book of the Undead.

Postscript :

You can see more videos of the event (of Shamini Flint,Dina Zaman and Fahmi Fadzil reading Sufian Abas) on Facebook. Gazillion thanks, Amir!

Spooky Book Launch for Undead Malaysians

If you aren't too busy revving your broomstick or sticking your fangs into people's necks or otherwise scaring up the neighborhood, you might like to attend a truly ghoulish halloween launch of not one but several books by ZI publications, Matahari Books and Oxygen.

The books involved are :

Taxi by Khaled al-Khamissi (ZI Publications) (RM25)
The Malaysian Book of The Undead by Danny Lim (Matahari Books) (RM20)

Three mini-books, collectively known as Tiga, published by Oxygen:
- Lost in KL by Bernice Chauly (RM7)
- Kayangan by Ruhayat X (RM7)
- Pasca Manusia by Sufian Abas (RM7)

You are all invited to this unique event. Please see the event's Facebook page for more details and RSVP your attendance there.

Date: Friday, Oct 31st, 2008
Venue: Rahsia Restaurant, KL
Time: 8.00pm - 10.00pm
Dress: Costume (ghost, ancient Egyptian, as yourself, anything you want...).

More about the books later on.

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.

Crap Crit?

John Sutherland on the Guardian blog suggests some reasons why literary criticism is in such a state of decline. (He even goes so far as to call what's left of the savaged Los Angeles Times literary supplement, "crap-crit"!).

The first reason is that, apparently, lit-crit is inherently unsexy :

You can sex up every other section of the paper, but seldom, if ever, the literary pages. And sexy is the flavour of our times.

Secondly, because lit-crit has been ruined by the academics. While they come :

... dirt-cheap. ... They can be dull. Really dull. Increasingly the Great British Public doesn't want a bloody academic review. Sad, but again the spirit of the age.

And thirdly, a lot of reviewing has shifted to the internet and to blogs. Not necessarily a bad thing, but :

One's only reservation is that, writing against the clock, bloggers often write hastily and thoughtlessly. The blogosphere, under pressure, is doing for literary style - the elegance, for example, of a John Carey or an AS Byatt - what texting has done for punctuation.

Now then, I'm not sure why good book-reviews might be considered "un-sexy". But then I'm probably turned on by all the wrong things! The fact is that I really enjoy a well-written review though I tend to seek them out only after I've read the book in question.

No-one wants dull. But academics necessarily don't have to be! A good writer will always remember the audience they are writing for, and if it's a newspaper column for the general public, the piece needs to be entertaining as well as informative, accessible but not dumbed-down. I have really enjoyed some of the pieces written by Prof. Lim Chee Seng in Starmag, for example. Ultimately though it is the editor who is the gatekeeper and must make sure that a dull reviewer doesn't find space on the page.

As for litbloggers not giving the time and attention to a review that would go into a printed piece, I can only talk about this from my own perspective. I'm not at all defensive here, and it's true that sometimes I don't have much time to blog, but want to record something about a book I've read, so I am loath to even call such posts reviews when they are really just a reader's response.

But some of the pieces I post here are also published in newspapers and magazines, and they of course get more time and attention. (Someone is paying for them!) I've also tried to spend more time writing about local books I feel deserve the space, especially if there isn't much chance of them getting a newspaper review. (Having said that, I know I am woefully behind and am very sorry!)

Reviewing properly actually takes time (to read and more often than not reread the book) and a lot of cranking up the old brain. That amount of brain-power exerted in other parts of my life earns me pretty decent money!

But by and large, reviewers here are generally paid very badly (and the payment from one national newspaper has actually gone down by 25% in the time I've been writing for them!). Most folks who write them do it simply for the love of it. They have to.

Talking of reviews though, Amir Muhammad is writing some of the most engaging reviews of locally published books that I have read, in the Malay Mail (the reinvention of the once sleazy tabloid is now complete!) and yesterday he reviewed Sufian Abas' Kasut Biru Rubina very nicely indeed, noting that the collection of stories :

... juxtaposes, with studious glee, the pop-inflected banality of contemporary life with inspired surrealism. Some of the stories are melancholy but most are either macabre or misanthropic; the best combine all three.

You can enjoy all Amir's Pulp Friction columns from past issues here and read more of his literary relates musings here.

Those Amazing Alternatif Malay Boys

Are these guys in the vanguard of alternative Malay literature?

There is a very nice piece today in The Sun about Sufian Abas and Ruhayat X, plugging their recent publications.

Sufian, the author of Kasut Biru Rubina is not too happy with being called "alternative", feeling the word is over used. Instead he wants to make fiction in Bahasa Malaysia more accessible to the masses :

It is not about changing the literature scene. I want to create books that I want to read ...

The shy guy who does not like giving interviews tells the interviewer :

You can invent anything about me …. You can say I was a kampung boy who was gang-raped by beruks (apes). A writer should not say anything. It is his work that should be talking.

Ruhayat X sees Aweks KL as :

... a platform for new voices to emerge ... If they [these writers] had submitted their works to Utusan Malaysia or Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, it would never have been published. ... It doesn’t mean these writers have nothing legitimate to say. I think they should be able to say it; then, we will have a more colourful culture instead of a culture that is just dictated by a certain establishment.

And he's actually quite proud that the National Library refused to co-launch the book!

I do not know whether this book is daring or not ... From what I understand, the writers are just writing whatever they felt was the truth. What’s surprising is that a majority of the stories deal with deprivation. That should say something about Malaysian culture. ... Some people are surprised by the themes. Some are repulsed but at the same time attracted to them ... I just thought these people should be heard. It is not supposed to be provocative; it is supposed to be a reflection of the plural culture we live in.

(Picture is nicked from The Sun which nicked it from my blog! Haha.)

KLAB Curry

Went to the first day of the KL Alternative Bookfair yesterday, and it was a really fun event where I couldn't turn without getting hugged by yet another bookloving friend.

Chet was doing a brilliant job organising a free book stall where people could donate books and take up to three donated by someone else. I took along a couple of bags of books and took just one - a historical imprint about tigers in Terengganu, but I was sad when I got the book hope later and found pages seriously infected with mildew!

Noorul was selling books in aid of the Malaysia-UK Exchange.

Ted was selling books for Suara-Suara publications, and also selling off some books Raja Ahmad had culled from his shelves, so I bought Prizewinning Asian Fiction by Leon Comber.

Bought a copy of poet/singer-songwriter Jerome Kugan's excellent first album Songs for Shadows. (Listen to songs here.) Also really love Shahril Nizam's art work on the cover.

Writer-publishers Sufian Abas and RuhayatX also had a table to flog their books. I'm glad to hear that the next edition of Elarti is due out soon.

Malaysian Bookcrossers were also giving away books - the only catch - you have to pass the book on to someone when you're done with it and register it online so that its journey can be tracked.

Bersih (The Campaign for Free and Fair Elections) launched (with a little help from Bubu the Clown) Selak a stunning book of photographs of the November 10th Rally. I didn't stay long because I realised I was hungry and there was so much else on in the afternoon. Guat came with me to enjoy the delights of the mamak shop downstairs. (Best naan and tandoori in the city?)

The lovely Farish Noor (looking remarkably gym-toned) on his way to talk give his talk about post-colonial race politics.

(More pictures to come.)

Sufian's Mission

Sufian Abas is Reads Monthly's pin-up boy in Starmag today. Daphne Lee sums him up thusly :

... a sulky young man who smells like freshly-pressed laundry.* He takes stunning photographs ... but (it is said) they are nothing compared to his beautiful, detailed work in cross-stitch. ... He tap dances. He enjoys skinny-dipping. And climbing trees. He loves horses, especially unicorns. He dislikes children, but thinks they might be delicious curried, or roasted and served with carrots and potatoes. Sufian claims that he was once nearly murdered by a witch.

But most importantly :

Sufian Abas is on a mission to save Malay fiction by producing works that people would actually want to read.

written in :

... the sort of Malay you hear on the street ... the Malay people actually use and understand ...

And he's conscious of filling a gap (presently almost uninhabited!) between what he calls the heavy literary prose and and the sort of trash you find in Malay romance novels. He also, and I think this is a particularly interesting point, urges non-Malay writers to write to Malay because they would bring something different to the language.

Anyway Daphne likes Sufian's book ... better than two other local collections she didn't think as good as they were cracked up to be on the blogs. (Blog?) Ahem. Never mind. We fought it out at the Food Foundry yesterday in between mouthfuls of toast and scrambled eggs . Chaque'un à son goût ... in short story collections as in breakfast dishes.

Priya K. reviews Sufian's book and finds the stories :

... snappy and heartbreaking ... the writing style is deceptively simple, opting for everyday language and pop culture references. The result is street poetry, with classic lines such as “dengan air mata berlenagan dan berkilauan seperti bebola disko” (with tears shining like disco balls). ... Philosophic pulp fiction, if I may venture to coin a term.

My review of Nikita Lalwani's Gifted is in Starmag today though with a Borders voucher when Kinokuniya was kind enough to give me the copy of the book which is a bit embarrassing. But never mind ... there is a 30% discount voucher for selected titles from Kino to clip out.**

Ted reviews Hitomi Kanehara's Auto Fiction (and reminds me that I still want to buy her Snakes and Earrings) and Martin Spice John Le Carre's Mission Song.

There's news too of bookstore events in April including of a free creative writing workshop to be run by Kam Raslan at MPH.

(*Hmm, just how close did Daphne get?)
(** There's a strange and sad postscript I want to stick at the end of my original post on the book.)

Wena's Wet Weekend

Then, after lunch and a quick rush round the supermarket to get survival rations for the afternoon with Chet's help, dashed over to Seksan's and the heaven's opened.

I was drenched even before I had unpacked the car, and the inclement weather didn't let up the whole afternoon. (What is happening to the weather? It doesn't seem like the monsoon ever went away?) But fortunately our loyal audience turned up in decent numbers. (Thank you!)

Wena Poon read a passage from her story The Shooting Ranch, my favourite story from Lions in Winter. Again, it was beautifully dramatised, and really showed how much she gets into the skin of her characters to write about them. (Not all authors - even some very big name ones - are good readers of their own work!)

Wena sadly had to rush off early as she had another appearance at Borders. I'm so glad she came, but sorry we couldn't have arranged better weather for her.

Animah Kosai (above right) dragged friends Dina Zaman (above left) ...

... and actor Na'a Murad (here getting his photo taken by a member of the press) along to read a couple of scenes from a new play she's working on called 100 Stones, which featured a woman married to a guy who has just become an elected representative. He doesn't seem to be too interested in sex, and there she is, desperately frustrated trying to seduce him with every trick in the book including sexy negligees.

It was interesting talking to Na'a in the break who reckons that the changed political landscape and the greater openness and willingness to engage in issues that has followed, is making it easier for artists of all kinds, but especially playwrights. It's early days yet ... but really, let's hope he's right.

I've been looking forward to Sufian Abas' first book for a very long time ... ever since we both got out first short stories published in Silverfish New Writing 1, in fact. Kasut Biru Robina is a collection of short shorts, some short short shorts just a few lines long. Bite size and snackable.

Sufian read a piece called Malam Mailakat Tidur (The Night the Angels Slept), and modest chap that he is, was going to end there but we encored him back for a second piece - Kisah Cinta (Love Story), a very amusing little tale about the fickleness of women.

Priya K. made an appeal for funds for the forthcoming Malaysian-UK exchange project, and illustrator Shahril Nizam brought some of his pictures along to be auctioned. The bidding is still ongoing and I'll post more about this later.

The break was extra long because the rain overhead was nosiy, but no-one seemed to mind too much as they were busy partying, networking, selling books ...

Ted Mahsun read a story, Pak Sudin's Bicycle I'd read on an e-group earlier and liked very much. He read it for the first time at Kata Suara the other week and had been surprised at how well it had gone down with the audience. Ted's writing is warm and whimsical, and it's really nice to see him developing as a writer. (He has a review of the new Stephen King book in the Star today, by the way.)

George Wielgus, poet, performer and writer describes himself as :

... a refugee from the wastelands of suburban England.

Slipping into the persona of her alter-ego, Mighty Jah-J, he gave us some hard-hitting poems, including Liberation and Death No. 1, which left us in little doubt why he had won the last KL Poetry Slam.

He was also selling his recently self-published limited edition zine for the price of a teh tarik (cup of "pulled tea"). You can read his poem Inside-Outsiders here.

We ended with a short tribute to Lloyd Fernando who passed away recently, and Priya K. read an extract from Green is the Colour.

Thanks : to all those who braved the rain, those who read, those who sold books, those who auctioned art, those who helped set up and put away and wash glasses, Shahril Nizam who designed the blogposter, and of course Seksan for the use of his beautiful space and the stunning visual backdrop provided by the current exhibition.

Our next readings is on April 19th and among the writers appearing will be author Kunal Basu.

Blue Shoes and Silverfish

Saras came by yesterday bearing the gift of a copy of Silverfish New Writing 7, in which her short story Invisible appears. (Some of you will have heard it when she last read at Seksan's.) There are also stories by Wena Poon (in next Saturday's line-up), and Yusof Martin , Robert Raymer, Viren Swami, Peter Brown and others. The collection is this time edited by South-African academic Ashraf Jamal, and Shanti Moorthy (whom I suddenly realised I had met ... she's the daughter of a very dear friend of my husband's. Small world, huh.)

If there's anyone whose story is included would like to read at Seksan's, please let me know, okay?

The cover by those amazing malay boys (Sufian Abas and Ruhayat X) is so nice, especially so as I recognise Saras' house and my friends in the moody sepia photo!

And talking about Sufian Abas, his new book Kasut Biru Rubina (Rubina's Blue Shoes) is now out, and can also be bought from Silverfish. Here's the blurb and it sounds intriguing :

A woman wakes up without her body. A boy tries to endure the pain of being an adult when mini animals start to come out of his anus. What do you do when angels forgot to bring a unicorn for your daughter's birthday? And are all shoes evil or just the blue ones?

Many of the characters in Kasut Biru Rubina want to live ordinary lives. But the unexpected happen. Brief, shocking, and full of lies that can only come from the twisted mind of Nigerian scammers, Sufian Abas' stories are snapshots that illuminate the strange hidden in a world we never want to live in.

Sufian will also be reading at Seksan's this Saturday.