Abstract
Introduction
One of the features of 2015 is the number of works of auto/biography and memoir. This calls for the introduction of a separate section listing these genres, which will continue to be a feature of the Bibliography for Malaysia and Singapore from this year onwards. Three works deserve a special mention. Rosaly Puthucheary’s Under a Shadow relates her memoirs of her years in Singapore during the Second World War. Goh Poh Seng’s Tall Tales and Misadventures of a Young Westernised Oriental Gentleman, posthumously published, narrates Goh’s life in Dublin as a student. Beth Yahp’s Eat First, Talk Later, included in the Malaysian list, consists of reflections on Malaysia, which was Yahp’s country of birth before she emigrated to Australia.
The surge of interest in autobiography in Singapore might have been buoyed by the passing of the island state’s leader Lee Kuan Yew, who served as Prime Minister of Singapore from 1959 to 1990. Lee’s memoirs have been revised and extended to include the year of his death.
Other non-fictional volumes by former politicians or those with political connections are those by the former ruling-party politician, S. Jayakumar, by Lee Kuan Yew’s daughter, Lee Wei Ling, and Francis Thomas, one of the founders of the Singapore Labour Front before he fully immersed himself in the educational field. Also of interest are memoirs by one of Singapore’s top criminal lawyers, Subhas Anandan, and by the university lecturer and diplomat, Maurice Baker.
One limitation of a Bibliography such as this is its relative concentration on more serious works of fiction at the expense of what is sometimes described as “genre” fiction. While some genre works, such as those that can be categorized as horror, detective, fantastic, or speculative fiction, have been included, they are seldom discussed in the Introduction, except for brief references to horror fiction from Singapore.
The distinction between “genre” fiction and “serious” fiction, however, is not always easy to maintain, and some writers are indeed capable of moving from one to the other, such as the prolific Weena Poon. She published a serious historical novel, Cafe Jause, which is set in 1930s Shanghai, and the second volume of the Hoshimaruhon series, Voyage to the Last Kirin. The latter is, unusually, a Chinese–Japanese swordfighting novel originally written in English.
With reference to genre fiction, mention should be made of the Malaysian author of horror and the supernatural, Tunku Halim, whose locally published novels do occasionally generate scholarly interest. There is also an exceptional instance of Malaysian genre fiction that has gained international prominence, which will be revisited at the end of the Introduction, as it is — unlike most run-of-the-mill works of medieval fantasy — directly relevant to Commonwealth and postcolonial literary studies.
Literary works produced by writers from Singapore were, as in previous years, comparatively more numerous than the works written by their Malaysian counterparts. However, more serious fictional works from Malaysia continued to be adequately represented, although the international attention for Malaysian fiction was not at the same level as in previous years, except for medieval fantasy, as noted above. This was partly due to the fact that Malaysia’s prominent novelists such as Tash Aw, Tan Twan Eng, and Rani Manicka did not publish new works during the year.
Among the more interesting Malaysian fictional work during the year was Wong Ming Yook’s self-published collection of short stories, The Library of Sighs. Wong’s work is written in a lyrical style reminiscent of the work of Tan Twan Eng.
There are 14 fictional works by writers associated with Singapore listed in the Bibliography. Half of them were published by Ethos Books, a local publisher that has emerged as the foremost publisher of Singaporean fiction. Among the noteworthy fictional works is Ming Cher’s novel, Big Mole, which was published by Epigram Books, 20 years after his debut work, Spider Boys (1995). Both works attempt to use the local dialect of English.
Not to be overlooked in discussing the fictional output from Singapore is the short story. Philip Holden, in his review of Yeo Wei Wei’s short story collection These Foolish Things, has aptly described the genre as “particularly Singaporean”, as it was more prominent than the novel at one noticeable stretch of Singapore’s literary history. Yeo’s volume is quite unique in its historical breadth, and some of the stories are self-reflexive and cognizant of the artificiality of fictional narration. Another short story collection that should be mentioned is Leonora Liow’s Moth Stories. The short stories in Liow’s volume show a fine ability to develop characters, and there is a concomitant propensity to make penetrating observations on human relationships.
The interest in poetry writing amongst the younger writers in Singapore is very healthy. This was attested by the 20 volumes published during the year, most of which were written by younger writers. Perhaps the most prominent Singaporean poet during the year, apart from the prolific and ubiquitous Cyril Wong, was Koh Jee Leong, whose collection, Steep Tea, was selected by the British newspaper Financial Times as one of the best volumes of poetry published during the year. A poem from the collection, “In His Other House”, was chosen by the British Guardian as its poem of the week on 8 September. Also of note were three volumes by the reflective multitalented poet Desmond Kon, and two new volumes by the poet and independent scholar Gwee Li Sui.
The Malaysian poetry scene was better than in some previous years, with more volumes by individual poets published. Unlike the Singapore poetry scene however, the output during the year was relatively dominated by older poets, with Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof, Shirley Lim, and Cecil Rajendra all publishing volumes of poetry. Their contributions are certainly welcome, and further substantiate our assessment of their importance in Malaysian poetry written in English.
Singaporean drama continued to thrive, with several performances of plays written by local playwrights (the Bibliography could only provide a selection of the reviews of the performances). What is of interest is the attention paid by theatre companies, not only to younger playwrights, but also to veteran playwrights, whose plays were revived during the year. The works of younger writers such as Chong Tze Chien, Haresh Sharma, Joel Tan, and Shiv Tandan were performed during the year, as well as those by veteran playwrights, such as Stella Kon and the late Kuo Pao Kun.
Twelve years after his passing, the interest in Kuo remained strong, with performances of Descendants of the Eunuch Admiral and The Spirits Play. There was also a newspaper report from India indicating the performance of his The Coffin Is Too Big for the Hole in the Malayalam language. Kuo’s Coffin and Kon’s Emily of Emerald Hill are perennial favourites on the stage and the year under review was not an exception. What seem to be the two plays’ restricted local references is not a barrier to their international reception.
The English-language theatre scene in Malaysia was less busy than in Singapore. The theatre practitioner, Huzir Sulaiman, is now based in Singapore and quite often regarded as a Singaporean playwright, as seen in Corrie Tan’s analysis of Huzir’s play Atomic Jaya as a Singaporean play, in spite of its obvious Malaysian contexts.
The publication of Singaporean English-language dramatic works may not mirror the high level of activity of its theatrical performances, but this was in contrast to the complete absence of Malaysian dramatic publications during the year. In Singapore, there were publications of three individual plays where the first volume of ten plays was written by Joel Tan. The collection of plays by Tan was published by Checkpoint Theatre which, incidentally, was co-founded by Huzir in 2002 and which has since established itself as a major theatre company in Singapore. Also noteworthy is the publication of Lim Chor Pee’s A White Rose at Midnight, half a century after it was first performed.
The Introduction began on an unusual note, with an observation on the atypically large number of non-fictional works from Singapore. It will end with another unusual note. This has to do with the prominence during the year of the Malaysian writer of fantasy fiction, Zen Cho. One could easily dismiss the entire genre of fantasy, but in Sorcerer to the Crown, Cho has written a novel that would be of interest to readers and scholars of Commonwealth and postcolonial literatures. Instead of toeing the white ethnocentric tendency in Regency-era fantasy fiction, she chose to culturally diversify her characters, with a black Englishman and a mixed Indian and Caucasian female as her protagonists. There is also the fascinating Malaysian witch, Mak Genggang (it may be anachronistic to call her “Malaysian” however, as the country did not yet exist during the purported historical time span of the fictional work). The novel has been described by the Australian writer Justine Larbalestier as a work where “Georgette Heyer meets Anthony Trollope with some Edward Said and a very big dash of feminism” (http://wp.me/P6p1Z2-nE).