Why Join?

  • Add New Books

  • Write a Review

  • Backpack Reading Lists

  • Newsletter Updates

Join Now

Filter:

Shouting From The Summits

Shouting From The Summits
  • Author(s): Kala Ramachandran
  • Location(s): Malaysia (Malaya)
  • Genre(s): Autobiography/Memoirs
  • Era(s): 1980s to present

‘Living proof that a stammer need not hold you back’. Leys Geddes Kala Ramachandran struggled with a stammer and it became so debilitating, she thought it would be with her her whole life. But then she embraced mountaineering. And...

A Malayan Affair

A Malayan Affair
  • Author(s): Rob Holley
  • Location(s): Malaysia (Malaya)
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Romance
  • Era(s): 1930s

The affair of the planter’s wife running off with her driver had been a burning topic in the British High Commission and clubs, and had even occupied several discreet paragraphs in the Straits Times … It is 1930s Malaya...

Among the White Moon Faces: An Asian-American Memoir of Homelands

Among the White Moon Faces: An Asian-American Memoir of Homelands
  • Author(s): Shirley Geok-lin Lim
  • Location(s): Malaysia (Malaya), United States (USA)
  • Genre(s): Autobiography/Memoirs
  • Era(s): 20th century

Shirley Geok-lin Lim’s memoir is a courageously frank and deeply affecting account of a Malaysian girlhood and of the making of an Asian-American woman. With insight, candor, and grace, Lim lays bare the material poverty and family violence of...

And The Rain My Drink

And The Rain My Drink
  • Author(s): Han Suyin
  • Location(s): Malaysia (Malaya)
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Historical
  • Era(s): 1940s/1950s

First published in 1956, Han Suyin’s magnificent novel about the Emergency Period in Malaya and Singapore evokes all the colour and conflict of a land where, in the late 1940s and early 50s, a bitter guerrilla war was fought...

Bamboo Island

Bamboo Island
  • Author(s): Ann Bennett
  • Location(s): Bangka Island, Kuala Lipis, Penang, Singapore, Sumatra
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Historical
  • Era(s): 1930s, 1940s 1960s

Malaysia 1962: Juliet Crosby, a plantation owner’s wife, has lived a reclusive life on her Malaysian rubber plantation since the Second World War robbed her of everyone she loved. The sudden appearance of a young woman from Indonesia disrupts...

Black Water Sister

Black Water Sister
  • Author(s): Zen Cho
  • Location(s): Penang
  • Genre(s): Fantasy, Magical Realism
  • Era(s): Modern

This mischievous Malaysian-set novel is an adventure featuring family, ghosts and local gods – from Hugo Award winning novelist Zen Cho. Her grandmother may be dead, but she’s not done with life . . . yet. As Jessamyn packs...

Cry of the Flying Rhino

Cry of the Flying Rhino
  • Author(s): Ivy Ngeow
  • Location(s): Johor, Borneo
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Crime
  • Era(s): 1995 - 2006

CRY OF THE FLYING RHINO is set in 1996 Malaysia and Borneo, told from multiple viewpoints and in multiple voices. Malaysian Chinese family doctor Benjie Lee has had a careless one night stand with his new employee – mysterious,...

Evening Is the Whole Day

Evening Is the Whole Day
  • Author(s): Preeta Samarasan
  • Location(s): Malaysia (Malaya)
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): early 2000s

‘A magical, exuberant tragic-comic vision of post-colonial Malaysia reminiscent of Rushdie and Roy. In prose of acrobatic grace, Samarasan conjures a vibrant portrait, by turns intimate and sweeping, of characters and a country coming of age. The debut of...

Have You Eaten Rice Today?

Have You Eaten Rice Today?
  • Author(s): Apple Gidley
  • Location(s): Australia, England, Malaysia (Malaya)
  • Genre(s): Historical, Fiction
  • Era(s): Dual time 1950s and 2010s

The Emergency rubles through the jungles, the kampongs, and towns as the communist uprising in 1950s Malaya adds poignancy to the salutation, ‘have you eaten rice today?’ when hunger drives some terrorists to surrender. Simon Frampton returns to Malaya...

In the Shadow of the Rising Sun

In the Shadow of the Rising Sun
  • Author(s): Olga Henderson
  • Location(s): Malaysia (Malaya)
  • Genre(s): Biography, Historical
  • Era(s): WWII

In February 1942, nine-year-old Olga and her family were living in Malaysia when Singapore fell to the Japanese Imperial Army in the biggest defeat in history of the British Forces. Sent to the notorious Changi Prison, they suffered three...

Would you like to add a book or a review or create a reading list? Join Today – It's FREE

Register Now