The Malayan Trilogy by Anthony Burgess
And The Rain My Drink by Han Suyin
The Separation by Dinah Jefferies
The Harmony Silk Factory by Tash Aw
Malayan Spymaster by Boris HembryGIVEAWAY Bundle: Love F1? This is for you
Five great books set in Malaysia
16th January 2019
Five great books set in Malaysia is the latest in our ‘Five great books…’ series.
Five great books set in Malaysia.
Malaysia is a fascinating, multicultural country in south-east Asia. With influences from Malay, Chinese, Indian and European cultures, it provides readers and travellers with a heady mix of images, sights and smells.
With a population of more than 30 million, a stable constitution and with one of the best economic growth records in the region, since full independence from the UK in 1957, Malaysia is a popular destination for migrant workers across the region and tourists from around the globe. On a personal note, I was privileged to visit beautiful Penang with my father, who spent a lot of time on this intriguing island in the late 1940s and early 1950s. He was stationed at RAF Butterworth on the mainland, whilst completing his National Service as a radar operator with the RAF.
The country’s current stability belies a more troubled history, recounted in some of the books we have chosen blow:
The Malayan Trilogy by Anthony Burgess
This trilogy of stories – “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 these books do justice to characters who are Malay, Tamil and Chinese as well as British.
It’s a great read if you’re visiting Malaysia, particularly some of the smaller cities with pre-war architecture and atmosphere, such as Penang, Malacca or Kuching.
And The Rain My Drink by Han Suyin
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 between communist terrorists lurking in the Malayan jungles and British, Australian and New Zealand armed forces.
With infinite sharpness and feeling, she writes about the intertwining lives of many people caught up in the clash of powerful forces. Dogged, downtrodden Chinese rubber tappers, a pretty girl called Small Cloud for whom betrayal has become a way of life, and the stiff, aloof world of the British administrators and their ‘mems’.
The Separation by Dinah Jefferies
A country at war with itself, a family divided and betrayed, a bond that can never be broken…
Malaya, 1955. Lydia Cartwright returns from visiting a sick friend to an empty house. The servants are gone. The phone is dead. Where is her husband Alec? Her young daughters, Emma and Fleur?
Fearful and desperate, she contacts the British District Officer and learns that Alec has been posted up country. But why didn’t he wait? Why did he leave no message?
Lydia’s search takes her on a hazardous journey through war-torn jungle. Forced to turn to Jack Harding, a man she’d vowed to leave in her past, she sacrifices everything to be reunited with her family.
The Harmony Silk Factory by Tash Aw
Set in Malaya in the 1930s and 40s, with the rumbling of the Second World War in the background and the Japanese about to invade, The Harmony Silk Factory is the story of four people.
Johnny, an infamous Chinaman – a salesman, a fraudster, possibly a murderer – whose shop house, The Harmony Silk Factory, he uses as a front for his illegal businesses; Snow Soong, the beautiful daughter of one of the Kinta Valley’s most prominent families, who dies giving birth to one of the novel’s narrators; Kunichika, a Japanese officer who loves Snow too; and an Englishman, Peter Wormwood, who went to Malaysia like many English but never came back, and who also loved Snow to the end of his life.
A journey the four of them take into the jungle has a devastating effect on all of them, and brilliantly exposes the cultural tensions of the era.
Malayan Spymaster by Boris Hembry
A true story of 1930s Malaysia, of jungle operations, submarines and spies in WWII, and of the postwar Malayan Emergency, as experienced by an extraordinary man.
Rubber planter Boris Hembry was a part of Freddy Spencer Chapman’s covert Stay Behind Party in Japanese-occupied Malaya, a member of the Secret Intelligence Service, and he formed the first Home Guard unit in Malaya during the Emergency.
Required reading for this period of Southeast Asian history.
Andrew for the TripFiction Team
Do you know any other books set firmly in Malaysia to add to our database? Please leave your thoughts in the Comments box below, and remember that you can buy any of these books through TripFiction by clicking on the bookseller links on any book page.
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Other posts in our ‘Five great books set in…’ series:
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Five great books set in San Francisco
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And our ‘Ten great books set in…’ series includes:
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I had graduated business Administration Science Degree in Common Wealth Open University. Then, I concentrate on researching whether how economic changing environment can influence our behaviors, e.g. consumer behavior in behavioral economic view. I had researched different behavioral economic topics included how artificial intelligence influences economic environment changes, how artificial intelligence influences consumer behaviors, how disease influences traveler leisure psychology, how economic changing environment influences public transport passenger choice, how e-commerce market influences consumer behavior etc. different books are published. I hoped my readers can make accurate analysis to learn how and why the economic changing environment influences consumer behavior in behavioral economic view.
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