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The Long Day Wanes: A Malayan Trilogy

The Long Day Wanes: A Malayan Trilogy
  • Author(s): Anthony Burgess
  • Location(s): Malaysia (Malaya)
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): post WW2

A sweetly satiric look at the twilight days of colonialism. Set in postwar Malaya at the time when people and governments alike are bemused and dazzled by the turmoil of independence, this three-part novel is rich in hilarious comedy...

The Malayan Trilogy

The Malayan Trilogy
  • Author(s): Anthony Burgess
  • Location(s): Malaysia (Malaya)
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): 1950s

This trilogy – “Time for a Tiger”, “The Enemy in the Blanket” and “Beds in the East” – relate the story of race relations in post-war Malaysia on the cusp of independence. Burgess had served in the colonial service, and...

The Plantation

The Plantation
  • Author(s): Di Morrissey
  • Location(s): Malaysia (Malaya)
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): 1970s

When Australian Julie Reagan discovers a book written about wild Malaysia in the 1970s, she decides to find out more about the author – her great aunt. Why did her grandmother refuse to speak about her sister who disappeared...

The Return

The Return
  • Author(s): K S Maniam
  • Location(s): Malaysia (Malaya)
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): pre and post 1957

It is the time for both apprehension and hope. The youthful narrator Ravi witnesses the change in a way of life and the end of a way of thinking. The story depicts the experiences of an immigrant community in...

The Rice Mother

The Rice Mother
  • Author(s): Rani Manicka
  • Location(s): Malaysia (Malaya)
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): around WW2

A compelling glimpse into a captivatingly exotic world of myth and magic. Beguiled by promises of wealth, fourteen-year-old Lakshmi leaves her native Ceylon for Malaya and marriage to a man many years her senior. But Ayah has lied to...

The Teardrop Story Woman

The Teardrop Story Woman
  • Author(s): Catherine Lim
  • Location(s): Malaysia (Malaya)
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): 1950s

Story is set to the backdrop of 1950’s Malaya, at the height of communist guerilla activity. A married chinese women, Mei Kwei falls in love with a priest who saves the wowen caught with Mei’s husband from public embarressment.

The Weight of Our Sky

The Weight of Our Sky
  • Author(s): Hanna Alkaf
  • Location(s): Kuala Lumpur
  • Genre(s): Young Adult
  • Era(s): 1969

A music loving teen with OCD does everything she can to find her way back to her mother during the historic race riots in 1969 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in this heart-pounding literary debut. Melati Ahmad looks like your typical...

Though I Get Home

Though I Get Home
  • Author(s): Y Z Chin
  • Location(s): Malaysia (Malaya)
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Short Stories
  • Era(s): Early 21st Century

Fourteen short stories intertwine in Chin’s beautiful, visceral collection. In the early 21st century, Isabella “Isa” Sin, 28, wants to be a writer. Instead, she’s imprisoned in her native Malaysia for writing an obscene poem that supports the leader...

Turtle Beach

Turtle Beach
  • Author(s): Blanche d'Alpuget
  • Location(s): Malaysia (Malaya)
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): 1970s

Two women, two worlds. Together they must risk everything Judith Wilkes, an ambitious journalist, leaves her husband and two sons in Australia and goes to Malaysia to report on the international refugee crisis. Ten years earlier, Malaysia provided Judith...

We, the Survivors

We, the Survivors
  • Author(s): Tash Aw
  • Location(s): Malaysia (Malaya)
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): Contemporary

A murderer’s confession – devastating, unblinking, poignant, unforgettable – which reveals a story of class, education and the inescapable workings of destiny. Ah Hock is an ordinary, uneducated man born in a Malaysian fishing village and now trying to...

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