Tag: Asian Lit

Puss in the Woods

Daphne Lee2 Comments

2089205694_0f3a2030c2_zOriginally published in The Star in 2009

I LOVE cats, but even if you’re not partial to flesh-blood-and-fur felines, you may find it hard to resist the charms of Dayan.

He is the creation of Japanese author/illustrator Akiko Ikeda and is the main character in four books translated and published by Dark Horse (best known as a publisher of comics). If you look at Ikeda’s website (www.wachifield.com) it seems that there are more books, including picture books and novels, featuring the cat and his friends. However, they’re in Japanese. The four titles thus far available in English are a little larger than Ladybird books, with the same hard covers, and fully-illustrated with the most charming and interesting watercolours.

Dayan has grey and red-gold stripes, a white stomach and four white feet. He has huge slanted amber eyes – and in fact, Ikeda’s characters are all notable for their large lustrous eyes.

Dayan lives in Wachifield, an imaginary world dominated by woodland and streams, and populated by the usual forest creatures like rabbits, frogs, foxes, otters and squirrels. There is an alligator though – his rather incongruous presence isn’t explained, and that’s one of the things I like about the way Ikeda writes. She doesn’t overtell the story – there’s no exposition at all, and characters and events appear in the books without introduction, but as if Ikeda is telling stories of creatures the reader already knows well. If you want every detail provided for you, then you may not like Ikeda’s style, but I find it very fresh and light. The reader is free to be a co-creator with Ikeda – he may suppose and imagine whatever he wishes when contemplating the world of Wachifield.

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Book Review: The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu

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paper menagerieFirst published in The Star on 27th March, 2016

Review by DAPHNE LEE

THE PAPER MENAGERIE AND OTHER STORIES

Author: Ken Liu

Publisher: Saga Press, 464 pages

THE Grace of Kings was my introduction to Ken Liu. It’s the author’s first novel, published in 2015, and the first in a planned “silkpunk” (a variation of steampunk) fantasy series called The Dandelion Dynasty. Kings is a spectacular piece of entertainment – ambitious, original and memorable, the world-building impressive, the characters convincing and sympathetic, and the fantasy elements fresh and surprising.

The problem with discovering an author at the first-novel stage of their career is you usually are in an agony of anticipation, waiting for the next book to come out. Fortunately, in Liu’s case, there is a prodigious body of prior work in the shape of short stories, novellas and novelettes. On top of that Liu is the translator of Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem trilogy (the final book is out this September), the first volume of which was the first translated novel to win the Hugo Award (2015).

And then there’s this collection, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories. Comprising 15 stories of varying lengths, styles and genres (within the speculative fiction spectrum), it aims to showcase Liu’s development and achievements as a writer of short fiction, but must have been a b**** to compile considering the fact that he has published over 100 stories since 2002.

The inclusion of the titular tale would have, of course, been a no-brainer. In 2012 it won all three of the most prestigious of sci-fi/fantasy prizes: the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Awards), and it is easily one of my favourites in this compilation.

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Book Review: Cyberpunk Malaysia

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cyberpunk

First published on 24th July, 2015 in The Star

CYBERPUNK MALAYSIA

Edited by Zen Cho

Publisher: Fixi NOVO

CYBERPUNK? What’s that?” That’s the question that usually follows once customers at the bookstore I work at stops oohing and ahhing over this collection’s silver foil cover. Not many Malaysians I know can define “cyberpunk”. Of those who can, a number probably have stories in this collection.

Cyberpunk, in case you’re wondering, is a subgenre of science fiction. With science fiction one tends to think “Robots! Spaceships! Star Trek!” – you get the idea. But cyberpunk?Read More »

Interview: Zen Cho

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This interview was first published on the now deleted local blog on 2nd January, 2015

zen

Zen Cho is the author of Spirits Abroad, published by Fixi NOVO, and editor of the imprint’s upcoming Cyberpunk anthology. She is also the self-published author ofThe Perilous Life of Jade Yeo.

This Q&A with Cho was carried out via email and was in danger of going on indefinitely as her answers raised even more questions and also gave me plenty of food for thought …Read More »

Book Review: Doubt & Bitter by Bissme

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doubtbitter

First published on 24th April in The Star.

Review by Daphne Lee

Publisher: Merpati Jingga

BETRAYAL and revenge are the main themes explored in two short story collections by long-time journalist Bissme (who goes by one name).

These relentlessly miserable, casually violent tales of mean-spirited, ill-fated characters hell-bent on destruction of one kind or other are obviously meant to shock, but the outrageous details and denouements lose most of their kick from being repeated like clockwork.

Halfway through Doubt (published in 2013), the gristly, gory details, the small-minded petty axe-grinding ceases to make you gasp. You simply end up groaning, ‘No, not again!’Read More »

Book Review: A Call to Travel by Rumaizah Abu Bakar

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call-to-travelFirst published on 10th March, 2015 in The Star

A CALL TO TRAVEL: MUSLIM ODYSSEYS

Author: Rumaizah Abu Bakar

Publisher : Silverfish Books

THERE was a period in my life when I read little more than travel books. It started with a re-reading of Bruce Chatwin’s What Am I Doing Here and In Patagonia, and continued, for more than a year, with books by Paul Theroux, Eric Newby, VS Naipaul, Redmond O’Hanlon, Pico Iyer, Colin Thubron and Vikram Seth. There was even one in which Edith Wharton travels through France in a motorcar, not to mention several by writers I’ve not heard of since.

Looking back, I realise that this was a time when I was a new, financially-strapped wife and mother. Armchair travel was, I guess, the most convenient and affordable means of escape from the mundanity of motherhood, a dead-end job and housework.

And it wasn’t as simple as the books transporting me via words and descriptions to strange new worlds. The destinations were only part of the attraction. What I really appreciated was the perspective of the authors – the way places and people were filtered through the lenses of their unique personalities and experiences, and how their reactions and views made you re-think your own opinions, question what you always believed, be fiercely scornful, or even feel inspired.

So, for me, what the travel writer brings to the tale is more than half the journey. I like travel writers to have angles and agendas. I like writers who travel to remember and to forget. I like travel writers who travel to make a point (political, spiritual etc.) or to learn (about the world, a culture, a lesson). I like travel writers who travel to find or to lose themselves, and, most importantly, I like travel writers to write what they think and what they feel.

I looked forward to reading A Call To Travel: Muslim Odysseys because the perspective of a Muslim woman was one I had never come across before in a travel book. The fact that Rumaizah Abu Bakar’s travels took her to a number of Muslim cities and towns was a plus.Read More »

Book Review: The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo

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ghost brideFirst published in The Star on 3rd August, 2014

THE GHOST BRIDE

Author: Yangsze Choo

Publisher: William Morrow, 368 pages

WHEN I first heard about this book, I was intrigued. I didn’t know the details of the plot, just the book’s title and that it was set in Malacca.

The title misled me because it suggests a marriage, without which there would not be a bride. My imagination misled me further. As I thought there would be an actual marriage, between a living girl and the spirit of a man, I thought that the story would focus on the married life of the couple, describing, in particular, the bride’s experiences in the world of the dead and how she copes not just with being a new bride but also the fact that her husband is dead! I imagined that there would be plenty of scope for conflicts – perhaps a dead “other woman” or a thwarted suitor in the world of the living, or strange and violent encounters with other-worldly beings.Read More »

Book Review: KL Noir Blue

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kl noir blueAn edited version of this review first appeared in The Star on 8th July, 2014

KL NOIR BLUE: NO ARRESTS FOR THE WICKED

Editor: Ee Leen Lee

Publisher: FIXI NOVO, 291 words

FIXI NOVO’sKL NOIR series continues with Blue, a collection that focuses on the shady world of crime.

No Arrests for the Wicked is the book’s cheesy subtitle, but this doesn’t mean that bad deeds go unpunished. Indeed, there are no happy endings for anyone, but the price of crime is never anything as conventional as the rope or 60 years with no hope for parole. Retribution is invariably more creative, poetic even, and much more gruesome than one would suffer if left in the hands of the legal system, as grubby as their paws might be. Hey, it’s noir so there can be no mercy, no silver lining.Read More »

Interview: Shi-Li Kow

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shih-li2This interview was first published on 11th July, 2014 on the now deleted ‘local’ blog.

Shih-Li Kow is a Malaysian writer published by Silverfish Books. In  2009 her short story anthologyRipples and Other Stories was shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award.

Previously, Kow’s stories had appeared in News from Home, a collection with two other Silverfish writers Rumaizah Abu Bakar and Chua Kok Yee.

This year, Silverfish published Kow’s first novel, The Sum of Our Follies. In the following Q&A, Kow talks to local about growing up in a small town, what needs to happen for Malaysian fiction to be more widely read, getting edited, and whyFollies isn’t ‘really a novel’.Read More »

Book Review: KL Noir Red

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KL NOIR REDFirst published on 14th April, 2013 in The Star

KL NOIR: RED

Editor: Amir Muhammad

Publisher: Fixi Novo

FIXI NOVO is the English language imprint of Amir Muhammad’s hugely successful Buku Fixi. Actually, I lie: according to the description on Fixi Novo’s Facebook page, the imprint publishes books in the American language, while its Manifesto declares that American spelling is used because “we are more influenced by Hollywood than the House of Windsor”. Fair enough, not that the distinction hits you like a ton of bricks or anything: Malaysians seem to use American and British spelling interchangeably and, if we’re talking terminology, most of us are, I believe, equally comfortable with bonnet and hood, lift and elevator, biscuit and cookie, and so on … and probably wouldn’t even be able to identify which term is American and which British.

The point is to position Fixi Novo as an unabashedly non-literary imprint (“pulp fiction”) that’s supposed to appeal to the unpretentious, unwashed masses – in particular the “young, the sengkek and the kiam siap” – no italics please!Read More »