July 28, 2016 · 13:19

Freedom or Theft?

Until recently I had not given a second’s thought to the problem of pirated books. Rather naively, I assumed that piracy was limited to music and software. Until I stumbled on an article in the Sunday Telegraph of 19 June 2016.

In it Robert Colville, a British journalist, author and commentator, describes how he felt when, two weeks after his book The Great Acceleration was published, he discovered that an illegal version had been uploaded onto a website. His first reaction was a sort of flattered bafflement – that anyone should wish to pirate his book – followed closely by anger. Being a journalist, Mr. Colville naturally did some digging. It did not take him long to find other authors with similar stories.

I was stunned to learn of people who indulge in stripping e-books of their software protections and who then distribute the stripped files over the Internet because they think they are making “information” freely available. Excuse me, but since when did Stephen King and Tom Clancy become “information”?

You do not need to be a bestselling author to be pirated: when Mr. Colville’s book was illegally copied onto a website, it ranked 309,607 on Amazon!

The more of his article I read, the more agitated I became. The subject is a salient one, now that I’m on the verge of having my first novel published. Getting to this point has taken five years of toil and persistence and much investment, emotional as well as material – research trips, developmental editing, not to mention forgone earnings. All of these costs were sunk before I was even signed up by a literary agent and a publisher. Yet there are people who seem to believe they should be able to read my novel without paying for it.

My agent Thomas Colchie confirmed that some of the other authors he represents have seen their books illegally uploaded onto a host of websites. Fortunately in the US and UK, large publishers are able to force stolen versions of books to be removed from websites, which contains the problem somewhat. However, this still means that 10% of e-books in the UK – or 7.2 million books – are read illegally. A whopping number, and one for which I fail to see any justification.

Do the people who pretend to be freedom-of-information warriors also refuse to pay at supermarket check-outs and in restaurants? Do they help themselves to Boots’ shelves? Because it seems to me that that is what book piracy is: theft, pure and simple.

Many of those who benefit from versions of illegally downloaded music, movies and books probably don’t think of themselves as stealing. Some may not even understand what I’m talking about. As a youngster in Malaysia, I routinely copied songs for other people and listened to music that had been copied by friends. Back then, I had not heard of intellectual property, I did not understand the consequences of my actions on the singers or songwriters. The same cannot be said of these so-called book pirates.

According to Mr. Colville’s article most of them are aged between 35 and 55 and sufficiently educated that they know how to strip e-books of their software protections. These are not teenagers who cannot afford books. Even if they were, let’s be clear about one thing: books are not an essential item like food or medicine. There can be no moral justification for stealing them in a wealthy country like the UK. If you want to read a particular book and you can’t afford it, take yourself down to the local library.

Lurking in the midst of this troubling phenomenon is a warped sense of entitlement. Some of the modern book thieves apparently believe that “writers are wealthy and publishers are wealthy and therefore, it’s okay to steal from them”. This line of reasoning is both factually flawed and morally disingenuous. First of all, the average writer is not rich. In 2013 authors earned on average just £11,000 – well below average earnings in the UK at the time of £26,500. In my own case, it took two full years to complete my first novel; if I hadn’t already been comfortably off, it would have taken a lot longer. As for publishers being wealthy, this completely misses the point. It isn’t as if my publisher does nothing and then suddenly reaps benefits. In my blog-post The Things that go into Creating a Book, I mentioned that I had not appreciated how rigorous the editorial process would be. My publisher is putting in a huge amount of care and professionalism into ensuring not only that every sentence in my book is as good as it can be, but also that every semi-colon is in the right place. Publishing a book is a huge enterprise that involves large numbers of people and their time.

So, when next you are offered a pirated copy of a book, please spare a thought for those who have put so much of themselves into making it available. That labour must be rewarded appears to be tacitly acknowledged by one of the piracy websites quoted in Mr. Colville’s article, which actually offers to pay its programmers! Apparently, even anarchy has limits. Not everything should be free after all.

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May 10, 2016 · 14:25

The Things that go into Creating a Book

Your manuscript has finally been accepted for publication, so now you simply sit back and relax, right? Ah… if only.

I had been told that transforming my raw manuscript into a final product would entail a huge amount of work. The trouble with phrases such as “a huge amount of work” is that they’re abstract facts, a bit like knowing how far the Moon is from Earth. I had little appreciation of what was to come.

For the first few days, nothing happened. I signed my contract and the publisher promptly disappeared. I continued working on my second novel, which was then in its third draft. From time to time, I glanced at the publishing contract to make sure it was real. Then, the woman who had bought the rights to my novel, the Acquisitions Editor at the publishing house, contacted me. She is a key person, my point of contact, “my editor” as it were.

We began with a long and detailed questionnaire. (They seem to like questionnaires; I’ve already filled in more than one). The form asked all sorts of things, from basic facts to nightmarish questions. “Describe your novel in one sentence.” I groaned. How do you do summarise a multi-cultural, multi-layered work set in British Malaya that weaves in history, mythology and cuisine as it grapples with identity through the lens of a strong female character with ten children? I suppose I’ve just done it there, but the sentence is convoluted. I spent a weekend coming up with a better version. The marketing geniuses at the publishing house had their own ideas. You will see, once the book appears, whether we succeeded.

The questionnaire held out exciting prospects. There was mention of the book’s cover. A cover! The mere thought of my book having a cover brought a frisson.

However, first things first; what followed next was more mundane, an activity we writers are used to: editing. My publisher asked for a “developmental edit”. Developmental editing usually happens early on, when the outline and structure of a story are shaped and altered.

In the case of my manuscript, the changes the publisher wanted were minimal. Nonetheless, a person called a Developmental Editor, or Dev Editor, was tasked to work with me. In case you’re confused, this is not the same as the Acquisitions Editor. There seem to be many people in publishing whose job titles include the word “editor”. The Dev Editor’s role was to clarify anything in the arc of my story which she felt to be unclear.

Of course, I had to be persuaded that aspects of what I had called the Final Manuscript were actually unclear. Really? After looking through the Dev Editor’s questions, I put my objections aside. She was clearly a professional, and if she found something confusing, who was I to argue?

There I sat, hunched before a computer screen, scrutinising pages I had read hundreds of times before. I even explained the intricacies of Nyonya kueh to the Dev Editor. Can you describe what ondeh-ondeh look like, she asked. Given our tight deadline, I wondered whether such queries were necessary. There were times when I’m sure the Dev Editor herself would have preferred eating to reading. ‘Your manuscript makes me hungry,’ she declared, a confession I found gratifying. And yet, with her fresh eyes, she spotted an error in the narrative detail! The error was small, but given how many people had already read the manuscript, you would have thought one of us would have caught it before. This is an excellent illustration of why there can never be too many readings before a book is released.

At the moment, my manuscript is being examined by another type of editor, a “copy editor”. I had not understood what this meant: I thought the copy editor’s remit would be limited to correcting sentences and punctuation, but apparently s/he is also checking facts. This is fascinating. My novel is a history-rich, epic family drama – there’s rather a lot to check. I wonder whether the copy editor and the fact checker are the same person. Is this a Westerner or an Asian, possibly even a Malaysian? I imagine someone in a room somewhere, poring over an old map of Ipoh to look at the streets on which my characters walk. Is s/he making rough measurements to ascertain distances and at the same time sampling copious amounts of food to check my descriptions?

On the one hand, it’s incredibly reassuring to know that what I wrote is being verified in this way; on the other hand, waiting to see what is uncovered is nerve-wracking. I think I did a good job with my facts, but heaven only knows. Better to find errors now though, rather than later. Books have had to be withdrawn due to mistakes not being found in time. Even large publishing houses are not immune, as the case of Jonathan Franzen’s novel showed. (There, the wrong set of proofs was sent to the printers.)

As if the above weren’t enough, work is also commencing on an audio version of my book! I had no clue how an audio book was made, and the team helpfully explained the steps.

In recent years publishers have been vilified. Everyone knows that they act as gate-keepers. Because they hold the keys to distribution, they also keep the lion’s share of revenues. But now that I can see what the book creation process involves, how many strands of work there are and how large the team is, I know I could not do this on my own.

My Acquisitions Editor, who is American, was in town for the London Book Fair. We went to Sedap, the only London restaurant with Nyonya kueh on the menu,  so that she could sample a little of what she had read so much about. We talked about the book, of course. If there is such a thing as pure excitement, I felt it then, as I thought of my novel being created. Alongside the thrill came anxiety too. A book is not like a business project report or a presentation: so much of yourself is invested in the writing of it. At the same time, it’s one of the easiest things to criticise. What that lunch helped me realise was that I was no longer alone on this journey. My editor and her team are as emotionally involved as I am. We all share a sense of anticipation, hope and nervousness. At the end of the day, it is the readers who will decide. The greatest test of all.

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March 7, 2016 · 17:00

At Last, a Publishing Contract!

I have exciting news – I finally have a publisher for my first novel. Readers of this blog will know that the journey has been a long one. I commenced writing my first book five years ago. It took two years to complete the final version, including the multiple edits which were needed, the polishing and refining which went into making ordinary words more poignant in places, sharper in others. I then had to wait another year before being signed up by a literary agent in New York, Thomas Colchie, a well-established agent who specialises in representing international authors. He and his wife loved my book. Despite that and despite their agency’s credentials, it took him nearly two years to find a publisher.

This delay is not unusual. The prize-winning Irish author Colm Tóibín had to wait nearly three years before his agent was able to secure a publisher for his first novel, The South. By then, Mr. Tóibín had almost completed his second book. His story is a good illustration of the crucial role which an agent plays. I followed my own agent’s advice, and was well on my way to completing the second book in my trilogy when Thomas called with good news. It really pays to have an agent who believes in you, who is persistent and at the same time, able to think outside of the box.

My publisher and I have now signed a contract. There is still plenty of work to be done: the final editing touches, the design of the cover, not to mention the actual title of the book (which we will need to agree upon). Such details may seem trivial, but they are what give a book its tone and feel. Titles are particularly important; choosing one is an art form, and while I have a working title, we may not use it in the end.

I have also just written a page of Acknowledgements, and it dawned on me how many people I needed to thank. There are my Malaysian family members of course, as well as the many friends who generously shared their life experiences as I set about doing research into a host of eclectic subjects. For the record, this research ranged from childbirth to the colour of elephants’ eyes, so some of my friends had to be quite tolerant of quirks! There are also my guinea pigs to thank, the beta readers on whom I unleashed drafts of the novel at various points. Not forgetting my developmental editor, my agent and his wife and of course my partner Svetlana. But I did not want the Acknowledgements page to be a mere list of names; in order to make my thank you more meaningful, it took over a day to perfect the prose.

Fortunately, when it comes to creating the final product, I will have the support of a whole team of editors and designers from my publisher. This is one of the advantages of having a traditional book publisher. It is quite exhilarating. At present I cannot reveal other details, such as when my novel will be launched. However I will give readers of this blog a heads-up as soon as I am able. Watch this space!

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January 1, 2016 · 05:49

An Unexpected Discovery

A few days ago, when I told a Frenchman that I came from Malaysia, he said, ‘Ah, you have a simple language.’ It was not the first time someone had told me that s/he thought Malay “simple”. The sub-text, albeit unarticulated, was usually: “simple language, simple people”.

I felt it again with this Frenchman, a European condescension towards my Asian culture. I thought to myself: what does he even know about Malay?

Malay was a language of my childhood, one of three. My family spoke English and Cantonese at home but I was taught in Malay at school – part of the first intake of students to be educated exclusively in the Malay language in what had previously been English-medium schools.

I learned the language, but failed to appreciate its poetic beauty. This was partly because in Malaysia, Mathematics and the Sciences are more highly regarded than the Humanities, and partly because of the political context in which the switch from English to Malay took place.

It occurred in the aftermath of May 13 1969,  a day on which Malaysians of Chinese origin were targeted for slaughter at the hands of mobs of Malays in Kuala Lumpur’s streets. The killings occurred after UMNO – the political party which has ruled Malaysia since its independence from Britain in 1957 – and its allies lost the popular vote and many parliamentary seats in a general election.

The period afterwards was a time of radical change. Within about a year, Malaysia had a new Prime Minister; within two years, a raft of racially discriminatory measures was put in place. It was then that Malay was imposed as the medium of instruction in previously English-medium schools.

Language, of course, is not only a means of communication: it is also a political tool. In Malaysia certainly, language and religion are used adroitly by UMNO. UMNO understood early on the power of language. It has been uncommonly adept at choosing emotive words and at using these words to craft an insidious political narrative.

Thus I grew up hearing that I was pendatang yang tumpang sahaja di Malaysia, a newcomer who was only squatting in Malaysia. This was the backdrop in which I was taught Malay. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I never stopped to think about what a beautiful language Malay actually is. If French (which I speak) is romantic, then Malay is poetic. It was only when I started writing a novel and began filling my landscapes with characters who ran around speaking different languages that I was struck by just how poetic the Malay language is.

Take for instance the simple concept of homeland. The Malay equivalent is tanahair, literally translated as “soil (tanah) water (air)”, in other words the earth and water from which you come. I hope you will agree that the expression “my soil and water” is much more evocative than “homeland”.

Or take that well-known beast, the “orang-utan”. In truth, the latter is a bastardisation of the words orang, meaning a person, and hutan, meaning forest. Orang hutan is actually “a person of the forest”. The phrase, if you think about it, is immensely inclusive; it says, “Here is the forest, we share it with this creature which is not so different from us – a person of the forest.” For me, orang hutan captures the essence of traditional Malay culture, which was at once utterly respectful of others and very gentle towards them.

Even that wonderful political creation, the bumiputera – the prince (putera) of the earth (bumi) or son of the soil, a person who by dint of race or religion is privileged in Malaysia – has a certain ring to it. From a purely linguistic standpoint, the word bumiputera is really rather beautiful.

There are many other examples, and yet poetic beauty is not what people think of when they mention the Malay language. Instead they say what the Frenchman said to me: Malay is “simple”.

What he and others don’t seem to realise is that Malay was written using the Arabic script, a form known as Jawi, until quite recently. I discovered this for myself while carrying out research for my second novel (for which incidentally I have completed a first draft). Most of this research took place at the National Library of Singapore (whose generous opening hours of between 10 a.m. and 9 p.m. allowed me ample time to work). There, shivering in the ultra-cold air-conditioning which Malaysians and Singaporeans seem to favour, I found that the Malay language newspapers I wanted to read had been published solely in the Arabic script. On further digging, I could not find a single Malay newspaper which had not been printed in Jawi up to the Second World War. I was of course unable to read any of them; the Jawi which we had been taught in school was rudimentary, because Jawi was already not in everyday use by the time I went to school.

If Malay were still written today the way it used to be – in the Arabic script – would people go around denigrating it as a simple language?

I grew up hearing and speaking Malay every day but I took the language for granted, in the same way Malaysians assume they will see the sun every day. Only recently have I rediscovered Malay. At the same time, I began to appreciate the richness of Malaysia’s multilingual environment. I can easily recall the distinctive sounds of my native country: Malay, with its elegant smoothness; the no-frills brand of Cantonese I grew up with, rough and ready, a far cry from the haughty Hong Kong version but more in tune with the go-getting entrepreneurs who spoke it loudly and merrily; and the energetic, tongue-rolling Tamil used by our Indian friends, full of indecipherable syllables at which I could only shake my head.

We in Malaysia are fortunate to have this wealth as our heritage. But I have yet to hear a Malaysian adoring any of our languages the way the French adore theirs. The French are happy to debate the intricacies of their language for hours and will happily tell you how wonderful French is. This is something I wish Malaysians could also do, starting with our national language, Bahasa Malaysia. I would love to see Malaysians not only owning Bahasa Malaysia and learning it with enthusiasm, but also acknowledging its inherent poetry and being proud of it.

 

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August 30, 2015 · 23:54

This Merdeka is Yellow…

Tomorrow, August 31, is Malaysia’s Independence (Merdeka) Day. Shortly after Merdeka Day thirty six years ago, I left Malaysia. I’ve lived away for so long now that I have spent more time in England than in my country of origin.

Yet, nothing grips me as much as major pieces of Malaysian news. Last July for example, when MH-17 was shot down over Ukraine,  I was riveted: engaged in both heart and mind, emotions veering between horror and utter disbelief, and finally anger. Hours later, when it was already clear that the plane had not crashed accidentally but had been shot down by a missile, major media networks (in three languages) changed their headlines to reflect this appalling new element.  All except for the BBC, which retained its misleading “Malaysian Plane Crashes in Ukraine” as if it had been Malaysian Airlines’ fault, as if the plane’s flight path had not been pre-cleared. I was so incensed that I wiped the BBC app off my iPhone.

This weekend, I have once again been glued to Malaysian news. A 34-hour protest has been taking place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capital. People were out in force – two hundred thousand according to the organisers, a mere twenty thousand by the government’s count. Most of the protesters wore yellow T shirts (hastily banned beforehand by authorities), blew into their vuvuzelas and air-horns, prayed when it was time to pray, listened to speeches and made music – all quite peacefully. Many even stayed overnight as had been planned, literally sleeping on the streets and squares of the capital. To see what it was like during the final hour of this marathon rally, see the attached link.

The protest was organised by Bersih (Clean), an organisation which is campaigning for clean, fair elections in Malaysia. This was the fourth rally organised by Bersih. At the previous demonstration before this one, an estimated quarter of a million turned up and police used teargas on the crowds.

Not surprisingly, the Malaysian government – which has a rather low tolerance of dissent – was up to its usual tricks last week. They first declared the rally to be “illegal”. When that didn’t work, the Home Minister banned yellow clothing and T shirts with the words “Bersih 4”. The authorities, knowing that a sleep-in was planned, promptly prohibited the erection of tents.

Despite these absurd obstacles, yellow T shirts abounded on KL’s streets. Demonstrators proceeded with their “sleep-over” – truly a sight to behold. Of course there have been plenty of naysayers, as there always are. People who belittle Bersih for “not going far enough”, and the protest as little more than the huff of a few well-heeled urbanites.

As the former chairperson of Bersih – the redoubtable Ambiga Sreenevasan – has pointed out, Bersih’s rallies take place despite the organisation having little money and no power and in spite of the entire machinery of government being arrayed against them. These rallies rely entirely on “the goodwill of the people”. Which is why they are remarkable: Bersih‘s rallies are tangible signs of a nascent civil society.

Street protest flies in the face of Malaysian tradition. As a nation, we prefer to avoid even the smell of conflict. We stick to safe topics, such as shopping, and of course, food! We can say a lot about food without touching on anything remotely controversial, anything that (we fear) may offend someone. If you spend your life in this “head-down, risk-free” zone, the thought of going on a march where you may be asked to hold a banner or shout and generally take a stand, is rather alien. Mahathir Mohamed, the former Prime Minister who turned up at the rally on both days, gave an interview in which he admitted that it was the first time he had joined a street protest – and he is ninety.

I only learnt about protest as a student at Southampton University in Britain. The experience was incredibly liberating. I discovered what democracy should actually be about. I found that in a truly democratic country, people were free to express legitimate political views, so long as they did not advocate violence on anyone else or infringe on the rights of others. In contrast to Malaysia, I could say what I felt without being shut down, called names or told to leave the country. I went on marches, I held placards, I became an activist. I disagreed vehemently with some people, and still managed to remain friends with them.

The whole process was thoroughly validating. Among my causes: gay rights. There were absolutely no positive gay role models then, and your boss could have fired you if s/he discovered your sexual orientation, no matter how well you did your job. It was such a far cry from today that it is hard to even remember what Britain was like in the mid-eighties. If anyone had told me then that in less than thirty we would be able to marry one another, I would have laughed out loud.

This example goes to show that protest can bring about change. You only have to think of the suffragettes to be reminded that without them, women would never have obtained the vote. Without protest, we would also not be attending universities today.

Could the same natural evolution happen in Malaysia?

On this, the signs are not good. The Malaysian government is one which loves the legitimacy that its veneer of democracy confers, at the same time as it hates the reality. Citizens wanting to hold Ministers accountable: what a nuisance. As for the possibility that the government might actually be voted out of office, perish the thought!

After fifty eight years in power, any government would be tired; this one is especially tired – of criticism from those pesky citizens. In recent days and weeks, Malaysian Ministers have acted with their usual brilliance. In late July, a leading business publication exposed the fact that US$700 million had entered the Prime Minister’s personal bank account. The official response? Suspend said publication for three months. How dare journalists do their jobs! This week, when it became clear that threats and intimidation were not going to prevent the weekend’s rally, the government blocked access to Bersih’s website (within Malaysia).

No wonder America’s former ambassador to Malaysia has voiced his worries. In a recent opinion piece, Mr. John Malott described how there are two faces to Malaysia’s current Prime Minister Najib Razak: the international man who knows what Westerners want to hear, and the domestic man who happily lines his and his wife’s pockets while curbing individual liberties and meddling with institutions.

As if to confirm his increasingly authoritarian streak, the Prime Minister told the nation yesterday: “All forms of street demonstration have to be rejected as they adversely affect peace and order and cause problems to the public.” Apparently, only “immature” people express their views by protesting on the streets. Such words (and his actions) do not bode well.

Where will Malaysia go from here?

Will the Prime Minister step down tomorrow? Unfortunately, this is unlikely.

Will we see greater restrictions on freedom in Malaysia? Possibly.

Could the country veer towards dictatorship?

As an optimist, I believe that positive change will come, but this will take longer than we either think or would like. What is important is for concerned Malaysians not to give up. We need to remain engaged, to stay strong and show that we will demand good governance, no matter how much our own government threatens us. For the sake of Malaysia’s future, we will not go away. Not until we have clean, fair elections and an end to rampant corruption and cronyism.

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June 21, 2015 · 20:24

The Story of Great Grandfather Chin Choon Sam and a Mosque

There is a road in the Greentown area of Ipoh, Malaysia, which is named after my maternal great grandfather Chin Choon Sam. He was the husband of the woman who inspired my first novel.

ipoh_on_malaysian_map1[1]

Chin Choon Sam was also the father of (among others) the late Chin Kee Onn. Chin Kee Onn in turn was the author of Malaysian classics such as Malaya Upside Down – the first non-fictional account of life in Malaya under Japanese occupation (from December 1941 through September 1945) and Twilight of the Nyonyas – a fictional tale of a Nyonya family in the early twentieth century, a period of decline for this mixed-race community (of which more below).

Not much is known about Chin Choon Sam other than that he was an educated man who came from a Hakka village in southern China. Great Grandfather arrived in Malaya at some point towards the end of the nineteenth century and apparently set himself up as a roving accountant to Ipoh’s first entrepreneurs. He didn’t become a millionaire but he did well for himself, so well that he decided to settle in Malaya.

By all accounts, my great grandfather loved his adopted home. He already had a wife in China, but Chinese immigration policy was such that women were not allowed to leave the country in the same numbers as men. In order to put roots down in Malaya, Chin Choon Sam took a local woman as his second wife. He chose a woman from the mixed-race Nyonya community who was shrewd, blessed with a fiery tongue and who delighted in feeding him eye-watering, spicy dishes.

Who exactly were the Nyonyas? Unfortunately, many people today, even in Malaysia, don’t know the answer. This is in large part because the Nyonyas (and their male counterparts, the Babas) do not fit into the political narrative which the Malaysian government and its ultra-zealous supporters would like us to espouse. The dominant narrative in today’s Malaysia holds that the country was “first” inhabited by the Malay people who, by dint of having arrived “first”, deserve “special privileges” – first priority in the civil service, education, public scholarships, land purchases and financial hand-outs. Protection for the rights of this privileged class is enshrined in the country’s Constitution (which incidentally, was generously agreed by our wonderful British rulers prior to their departure).

Moreover, because the Malays converted to Islam sometime between the twelfth and the fifteenth century – a religion brought by traders from India and the Middle-East – it necessarily follows that all Malays born today in Malaysia are Muslim. It must be so, how could they possibly be anything else?

There are some who would like us to believe that it has always been this way in Malaysia: that every person of Malay descent has been incontrovertibly a Muslim since the twelfth century.

Alas, the Nyonyas are thorns in the above narrative. Here were local Malay women marrying immigrants from China and then proceeding to adopt some of their husbands’ customs, including, crucially, their religion. Instead of practising Islam, the Nyonyas adopted Buddhist-Taoism.

Worse, Nyonya and Baba communities were established along the coastal parts of Malaya from the fifteenth century onwards. In other words, a sizable Chinese community began settling in Malaya six hundred years ago – a very long time ago by anyone’s standards. If it were not so, Nyonyas and Babas would never have come into being.

The existence of Nyonyas and Babas is rather inconvenient. Should their descendants (people like me) not also deserve “special privileges”? For how many generations do your forbears need to have been around before you enjoyed such privilege? This question is best avoided, otherwise Malaysia’s racial policies would be shown up for the poisonous, antiquated trash they are.

Therefore, instead of celebrating an interesting part of our heritage, the Malaysian government chooses to ignore it. Evidently, parts of Malaysia’s history cannot be publicised – it would give the citizens ideas. The Nyonyas and Babas point to a time (not even that long ago) when Malaysia was actually liberal, when the Department for Islamic Development (JAKIM) did not exist and there were no officials lurking to poke their noses into people’s daily lives.

It was in that age that Chin Choon Sam married a woman from the Nyonya community. They had nine children together: three girls and six boys. To cement his position in Malaya, Great Grandfather invested in seven plots of land in Ipoh, my family’s hometown. He would have bought them sometime in the first decade of the twentieth century, when Ipoh comprised barely more than a few streets.

Of all the places in Ipoh, Chin Choon Sam chose to buy his land in Greentown. Greentown then was not the thriving metropolis it is today. It was actually a bit of a wilderness – far from town, full of rubber estates and mosquitoes. To say that Greentown had uncertain prospects would have been generous. Most people must have thought Great Grandfather mad or very foolish, which is why he probably acquired his seven plots for a song.

Why only seven plots, you may ask, when he had nine children? Because my great grandfather, as typical of any Chinese man of the time, was thinking only of his sons. Each son would need to build his own house, while it was assumed that his daughters would marry and be provided for by their husbands.

But there was one extra plot. This, Chin Choon Sam donated to the Malay community specifically so that they could build a mosque. The only mosque in the area is the Masjid Muhibbuddin Shah (Masjid meaning Mosque in Malay) on Jalan Abdul Jalil. It’s close to where my family used to live and is very likely to have been built on Great Grandfather’s seventh plot. In those days, gestures of friendship between non-Muslims and Muslims were uncontroversial. My great grandfather’s donation was welcomed and a little road in Greentown was named after him.

The Author on Chin Choon Sam Road

The Author on Chin Choon Sam Road

Contrast that with what happened in Malaysia last week, when plans by the Democratic Action Party (DAP), an opposition party, to build a mosque, were condemned as an “insult” to Muslims because funds for building mosques had to be “halal”. The DAP, despite having Muslim members, is conveniently branded a political party of and for Malaysian-Chinese, who are of course not halal.

My great grandfather’s desire to pay homage to his adopted country was natural and highly laudable but I  wonder: would his gift have been accepted now? In the sorry state that is today’s Malaysia, I suspect not.

To Malaysian Readers: I do know that Article 153 of Malaysia’s Constitution safeguards the position not of Malays per se but of “Bumiputras“. The definition of Bumiputra – a Prince of the Soil, a protected class of person in Malaysia – is convoluted though, and not relevant to this blog-post. Article 153 is a minefield in Malaysian politics which would require separate discussion.

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February 17, 2015 · 05:06

Of Hot Cross Buns and Croissants

An email arrived recently in my mailbox screaming “JAKIM bans hot cross buns in its bakeries”. In case you hadn’t guessed, JAKIM stands for JAbatan Kemajuan Islam Malaysia – the Department of Ismalic Development in Malaysia. The headline I saw was therefore entirely plausible.

Digging a little, I found out that the article was old news. The story had done the rounds a few years previously, when it was said that in JAKIM bakeries, the crosses on hot cross buns had been turned into mere ropes. In other words, one of the lines on the cross (see photograph) had been removed, purportedly to avoid “offending” Muslims.

A Hot Cross Bun on a Plate

There was just a small problem: a hot cross bun with no cross is no longer a hot cross bun. This observation prompted an imaginative local blogger to christen the new bun with the name “tali-bun”, “tali” being the word for rope in Malay. Talibun is also deliciously close to Taliban, and we all know what that connotes.

If JAKIM has indeed banned hot cross buns, it will not have been the first time that this innocuous pastry has sailed into controversy. Which is mind-boggling if you think about it – how could a sweet, spiced ball of dough possibly cause such fuss? Yes a cross sits astride its top and yes, the bun is traditionally eaten at Easter, but the bread holds barely any religious connotation today.

And yet, the sign of the cross still has the power to terrify.

As early as 2003, Britain’s Daily Telegraph ran a story saying that a handful of local councils in Britain had banned the traditional hot cross buns at schools to avoid causing “offence” to “non-Christians”. When it emerged that the councils named by the Telegraph did not in fact have policies on hot cross buns, the paper had to apologise.

However, the debate over hot cross buns just wouldn’t go away. A few years later, it was the turn of a British hospital to cause a furore by not serving hot cross buns at Easter. This decision upset so many people that the hot cross buns were soon reinstated.

The Brits who spent time worrying about how the sight of crosses could “upset”, “offend” or otherwise imperil Muslims had obviously not heard the story of the croissant. The croissant is today associated with France but it did not originate there: the bread actually came from Austria, from Vienna to be precise. Anyone familiar with the extraordinary variety and quality of Austrian pastries will not find this revelation surprising.

Among the most memorable characteristics of the croissant is its shape: the bread looks like a crescent. Croissants in a WindowIndeed, the croissant may well have first been baked after the siege of Vienna in 1683, when bakers working in their cellars throughout the night heard burrowing underground – the sound of Ottoman soldiers invading – and alerted the authorities, thus saving Austria. As a reward, legend has it that the Viennese bakers were given the right to make a pastry in the shape of the Ottoman crescent.

I first read the above account in Stephen Clarke’s wonderfully entertaining book 1000 Years of Annoying the French. The author makes plain that there are other theories regarding the origin of the croissant, one of which is that it derives from an Austrian pastry known as the kipfel. There are records of the kipfel going back to the middle ages. In contrast, croissants do not appear in French literature until 1853, when a chemist named Anselme Payen wrote a book called Des Substances Alimentaires (Dietary Substances) – a title almost designed to put you off your food. In his book, Monsieur Payen discusses croissants under the section “fantasy or luxury bread”.

Regardless of who is right about the origins of the croissant, what is clear is that it was introduced from Austria into France. In its adopted country, the croissant soon became a breakfast favourite. Since then, millions of people – Christian, Muslim, Buddhist and otherwise – have been gulping down crescents – the sign of Islam (and of the moon) – without even being aware of the fact. Ingesting a crescent every morning, with and without butter and almonds and chocolate, has not upset anyone, irrespective of religion, nor has it dented faith itself.

The benign nature of the croissant did not stop a group of rebels in Syria from issuing a fatwa, a Muslim religious edict, against the bread because its “crescent shape celebrates European victory over Muslims”. Evidently, there are Muslims who need protection from both the cross and the crescent. That is the absurd situation we could end up living in, if ideologically-driven political correctness is allowed to become the norm.

“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar”. It was the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud who came up with this perceptive saying. The people who are so busy pronouncing fatwas and other rules obviously cannot just allow a cigar to remain a cigar; otherwise, they would be out of work. Our only hope is for common sense to eventually triumph over ideology.

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December 29, 2014 · 13:31

I’m Back, with Two More Books in the Making

I’ve taken a break from this blog for several months, not because I’ve had nothing to say, but because the journey of getting a first novel published has been more complex and frustrating than I expected. I wasn’t naïve about the process either; having talked to many people beforehand, I understood what it involved.

Alas, one has to grow a thick skin. I thought I had one (in comparison to many artists). Coming from business and finance, I was already used to knocks and bumps, critical feedback and tough conversations. This was different. When you’ve put your heart and soul into an endeavour, rejection feels totally different.

In March, when I was signed up by Thomas Colchie (see By Serendipity, I Have an Agent!), a literary agent who specialises in representing international writers, I had high hopes. Thomas approached a dozen publishers on my behalf, but unlike theoretical physics, everyone has a view, and this view is subjective. Publishers turned us down. The funny thing is, their feedback – to the extent that they gave any – was not consistent. For some, the book was not literary enough, for others, not commercial enough; a couple of publishers complained about the Malaysian-language dialogue, others about the pace being too meandering. My partner, bless her, was outraged by this last comment, because its meandering nature, like a winding river, was precisely what she loved most.

There is a Russian fable about an elephant who painted a landscape. Before sending it off to an exhibition, the elephant invited friends over to inspect his painting. The elephant was very excited: would his friends praise him or criticise him? What would they suggest as improvements? Each animal friend came, inspected, and pronounced. Their criticism was all valid, but by the time the elephant had incorporated their suggestions, his painting had turned into a fantasy savannah featuring snow, ice and the River Nile side-by-side – a far cry from what he had wanted to depict.

Should I re-write my novel, or should I stand firm? That was the decision I had to make.

My agent didn’t think I should re-write my work. He believed that the pace and richness suited the story and its setting – South-East Asia at the turn of the twentieth century. Instead, Thomas advised me to start writing the second book in my trilogy. This may sound strange – if you can’t find a publisher for one book, why write another? But Thomas, who is a highly experienced agent, believes that the second part of the story, being less complex, would be easier to sell. For the moment, I’m taking this advice. I will commence research in Malaysia next month.

Meanwhile, I’ve completed the non-fiction book I had already started – a short work about my experiences in France. Anyone who has read the blog-post about my battles with a skip (yes that’s right, a skip) will have gleaned that there is little love lost between France and me. France may be a superb holiday destination, but once I began spending more time there, I found the place a huge disappointment.

I did not want to write a French-bashing book though, as there are already plenty of those, nor did I want my manuscript to sound like a litany of complaints. Instead, I’ve tried to achieve a style of loving, albeit sceptical, humour – along the lines of the vastly popular A Year in Provence or the more recent 1,000 Years of Annoying the French. The latter may sound like a piece of French-bashing but isn’t. Really. Having said that, any French person reading it would need a sense of humour.

My own book will centre on some of the things my partner and I had to confront when she bought a house near Paris and I set about managing its renovation. This is not an account of builders and DIY but is about things you would not imagine finding in Western Europe in the twenty first century. Phenomena such as cash desks (I can already hear it, what?), gardeners whose quotes depend on what they think you can afford (not on the size of your job), a taxi driver who barks at three passengers to squeeze into the back because he’s charging his iPod and can’t be bothered to move the device. If you think we were just unfortunate, we weren’t – others have recounted similar experiences. In his book 1,000 Years of Annoying the French, Stephen Clarke even describes Parisian taxi drivers as being “allergic” to having passengers on the front seat. And I thought I knew France. Non, pas du tout!

To be clear, I’m not trying to change anyone: the French have every right to be as they are. In fact, it would be great for us all if the country stayed more or less as it is (and even better if it regressed by 50 years, as some politicians are unwittingly proposing). I could never live there though. But I hope that my account of how to deal with certain French peculiarities, or not (as the case may be), would be entertaining to anyone with an interest in France. It might even be thought-provoking for those planning to move to the land of foie-gras.

Now nearing the end of its third edit, my non-fiction manuscript is almost ready. I’ll be sending it soon to my agent for initial feedback and he’s already expecting it. Fingers crossed.

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May 23, 2014 · 13:22

One Small Step, A Giant Leap

In the course of writing my novel, I had many opportunities to compare the Malaysia I knew with the Malaysia of today. I have already shared my sadness, disappointment and worry elsewhere (The Malaysia We’ve Lost; Where is Home?; Ambiga, Allah and this Visit Malaysia Year).

This past week has been markedly different. On May 17, 2014, my country finally took a step in the right direction, and raised my spirits in the process.

On that day, a brave young woman of Malay ethnicity became the Opposition candidate in a predominantly Chinese town. If this sounds trivial, it is not. In Malaysia, race and religion are used as political weapons, and Dyana Sofya Mohd Daud’s story marks a water-shed.

As it happens, I had already been thinking about Teluk Intan, the town where Dyana is standing for election. My agent Thomas Colchie (see previous blog post), had asked to see the synopses of my entire trilogy of books, and I had been pondering Teluk Intan because the town will be mentioned in my second novel (where it will be called by its colonial name of Telok Anson). I am still at the planning stage for this second work: jotting down ideas, looking at maps, dreaming… But I digress; my purpose here is to share why Dyana Sofya Mohd Daud has given me such hope.

She is a lawyer from a family of active government supporters. In Malaysia, this means that Dyana could enjoy a good life by not rocking any boats. Instead, she joined an Opposition political party. Not only that, but she chose a party that is widely regarded as “Chinese”.

Why did she do this? Here is a quote from her: “Malaysia needs a new form of politics and to drop the old race based politics. I choose to forge a path towards a better Malaysia.” Bravo, absolutely spot on.

In truth, the party which Dyana joined – the Democratic Action Party or DAP – welcomes all races and religions, but because it has historically appealed more to Malaysian-Chinese voters, the incumbent government likes to stick it with a “race” label. The fact that Dyana chose this party was a courageous step, demonstrating an independence of mind and a willingness to go beyond her comfort zone to further her ideals. How many of us can say we have done that?

Almost at once, the backlash against Dyana began. She was wolf-whistled at her own nomination. Photographs of an actress who looked like her but was dressed in a bikini floated around the Internet. There were whispers about her age: too young at twenty seven, apparently. Malaysia’s incumbent Prime Minister was only twenty three when he was handed his seat on a plate. Did anyone complain about his youth? I doubt it. One rule for men, another for women. Same old, same old.

The great and the good of Malaysian politics have come out in force to denounce Dyana as a traitor (to her race), to bait her on religion, even to scold her mother for not sufficiently indoctrinating her! This, unsurprisingly, came from our former Prime Minister, an expert in the gutter politics of tribe. All kudos to Dyana’s mother for standing up so publicly for her daughter: “As a mother, I will support my daughter. I will campaign with her because she is my daughter.” Quite. But when so many have so little to say about so few, you know that something momentous is happening.

And what is happening is that the old politics of tribe are being challenged in highly public fashion. A young Malay, Malaysian-born and bred, has stood up and said NO to the race-based politics that have held sway since the 1970s. She is too young to know the Malaysia which I knew, and I have always worried about what would happen to Malaysia when those of us who remember what it used to be like, pass on from this Earth. Now I have glimpsed the answer: just because you have not experienced what Malaysia once was, it does not mean that you will be blind to injustice when you see it.

Dyana is a tangible challenge not just to Malaysia’s old politics but also to the rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism, and strong forces are lined up against her. They do not want her to succeed. They do not want her to win, and if she wins, they do not want her to do a great jobs, and if she does a great job, they do not want her to remain with the DAP. Because if she succeeds, she will be living proof of exactly the sort of progressive, modern, inclusive Malaysia which many in my country are terrified of. If she succeeds, more may follow her. If more follow, what would become 0f vested interests? What would be the raison d’être of single-race and single-religion political parties? Heaven forbid, we may actually move forward and build the truly embracing society we are capable of building together, the real One Malaysia, not the slogan-bound 1Malaysia the government likes to trot out for tourists.

For all these reasons, I wish Dyana and the DAP the very best on 31 May 2014 and beyond. (For the record, I am not a DAP supporter).

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March 21, 2014 · 23:18

By Serendipity, I Have an Agent!

Many things in life happen by chance.

I met my partner by chance. Russian-Malaysian combinations are rare; we met only because, while attending a networking event for professional gay women, we found ourselves seated next to each other at a lunch. Seating was on a first come, first served basis along an extremely long table; if either of us had turned up a few minutes earlier or later, or if anyone else had come in at a different moment, we might never have struck up a conversation. How serendipitous is that?

And now I have just returned from New York, holding in my hand a signed contract from a literary agent. This too, came about by chance.

At the start of Chinese New Year celebrations in February, my partner and I invited a Russian family to her house in France. There, over a meal of Malaysian-Chinese fondue, otherwise known as steam-boat, I got to know our guests – a couple and their son. I had not met them until then, even though they live in Paris. I had heard that she was a respected psychologist, he a journalist and published author, but I had no idea quite how well-known he actually was in his native country.

This is just as well, because it meant I felt no inhibitions. Malaysian steam-boat is a very interactive meal; basically, you cook what you eat – meat and vegetables, seafood, tofu and noodles – in a boiling vat in the middle of the table. When your food is ready, you fish out the tasty morsels with metal nets. The smell is wonderful and so close to your nose too, which always puts everyone at ease.

Being writers, Sergey and I began to discuss books. When Sergey asked about my novel, I told him how it had been inspired by my great grandmother, and that the story contained a unique mix of family drama, history, business, food as well as mythology. I’m sure I must have sounded passionate – I can’t help myself. Before I knew it, Sergey was asking for a synopsis. He casually mentioned that he had an American agent who might be interested in my novel. Would I want an introduction?

I jumped at the chance. As fate would have it, our dinner guest turned out to be Sergey Kuznetzov, whose novel Butterfly Skin achieved cult status in Russia and has been described as ‘Russia’s answer to Silence of the Lambs’. There I was, happily fishing out bits of chicken and pak choi leaves and dropping them into the bowl of a Russian literary star, and I didn’t even know who he was.

In turn, Sergey’s American agent is none other than Thomas Colchie, who specialises in representing international writers. Could I have had better luck?

Of course, there was always the possibility that Thomas and his wife would not like my work. Fortunately, they loved my manuscript and immediately offered to represent me.

Suddenly, I had hit a milestone in this journey of my novel.

I now have as advocates two people who are passionate about my book and who are highly respected in publishing circles. The Colchie Agency has represented and continues to represent many great Latin American/Iberian authors, among them Laura Esquivel (Like Water for Chocolate), Reinaldo Arenas (Before Night Falls), Manuel Puig (Kiss of the Spider Woman) and Carlos Ruiz Zafón (The Shadow of the Wind). It has notable Asian authors too, including Shazaf Fatima Haider (How it Happened). I am proud to be their first East Asian novelist and short story writer.

There remains a long road ahead: the path to publication is slow and not without pitfalls. I’ll be sure to keep the readers of this blog informed of progress. Meanwhile, it’s back to writing, this time a work of non-fiction – about the many surprises of France!

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