Malaysia and Singapore

Introduction

A major carry-over from the previous Bibliography is undoubtedly the continued importance of Sonny Liew’s graphic novel The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye (first published in Singapore in 2015). Without doubt, it was a work that continued to attract attention in at least three major ways. Firstly, it won, during the year, three Eisner awards (these awards are generally recognised as the most important awards for comic arts, comparable to the Pulitzer and the Man Booker prizes for more conventional novels). Secondly, the debate on the withdrawal of the government grant to Liew and the more general debate on funding for arts publications, in particular from Singapore’s National Arts Council (NAC), continued unabated. Thirdly, and most importantly for bibliographical purposes, it raises questions as to the extent that graphic novels and comics in general should be included in an assessment of the year’s work in literature for Singapore and Malaysia.

Liew’s Eisner awards are not in the specific or exclusive domain of literary accomplishment. The award for best writer/artist, for example, gives recognition not only to writing, but also to Liew’s achievement in the graphic arts. The award for the best publication design more clearly looks at what Liew and his publishers have accomplished in the graphic aspect of his art and in the production of the book. Nevertheless, there is no question about Liew’s literary achievement, as he deservedly won the Singapore literature prize for fiction in the previous year. What the Eisner awards underline (something patently obvious in any reading of the work) is that Liew’s aesthetic triumph is not only in his use of language, but is multimodal in nature.

The withdrawal of the grant to Liew because the content was deemed to be controversial, later proved to be a major embarrassment for the NAC. The work, of course, proved to be a success not only in Singapore, but globally, becoming an international bestseller, and was translated into Spanish, French and other languages. The NAC however, ironically congratulated Liew on winning the Eisner awards, which of course was criticised, as it had previously withdrawn the grant for producing the work.

There was one other prominent case of a writer whose NAC grant was withdrawn for a novel which was also deemed controversial: Jeremy Tiang’s novel State of Emergency, which was published during the year. This is thus not a problem that has ended or gone away. The withdrawal has sparked debate on the merits or demerits of government funding for the writing of literary works, as funding might affect the writer’s freedom on what to write, and hence has an effect on the wider issue of aesthetic freedom. It has to be said that the reason given for the withdrawal of the grant to Tiang is more sensitive and less contentious than the basis for withdrawing the grant to Liew: it hinged on prior contractual agreement and not on the possibility that the work might undermine the authority and legitimacy of the Singapore government, which was the reason given for withdrawing Liew’s grant (Yong, 2015).

One of the reasons for including Liew’s Art of Charlie Chan in the previous Bibliography was its winning the Singapore Literature Prize for fiction during the year, which made it difficult to exclude it. There have also been growing debates over the years on whether graphic novels could be considered serious literature and on whether they should be taught in English or other departments of literature. What we can say here is that within the context of the literature and culture of Malaysia and Singapore, the success of Liew’s work is extraordinary. It is by no means a simple comic work, as its grasp of narrative technique is complex and demanding; an American reviewer’s comparison of the work to Joyce’s Ulysses on National Public Radio is not without basis.

So what does Liew’s work do to the inclusiveness of literature in general, or the inclusiveness of a literary bibliography? The inclusiveness of literature is not a problem, if one considers literature in the broad sense. However, a bibliography, unless it is an all-inclusive bibliography that incorporates wider cultural concerns – in which case it should be labelled or titled accordingly – is usually more circumscribed. A comparison can be made with film or video – I have so far excluded all films and videos from the Bibliography, unless they are based on literary works, such as the adaptations of Kevin Kwan’s novels mentioned in this Bibliography. However, the focus would still be on the literary works and not their adaptations.

The graphic novel might be different from film or video, as it uses a printed medium like conventional novels, and veers towards the conventional novel as an art form in other ways, except that it is not completely written in language, and uses graphics throughout the work. But even here, a dividing line has to be drawn. Not all graphic novels can be included, as there are qualms about the literary quality of some of them. The literary quality of Liew’s work is very clear, and can be quite easily corroborated, but the same cannot be said about other works in the genre. For this reason, I was not able to include another graphic novel for this year’s Bibliography.

A similar pattern in the publication of literary works in previous years can be seen this year. Unlike previous years, however, there was no print publication of dramatic works this year, or at least none that I could identify from the usual publication outlets and theatre companies. Previously, there were usually less than a handful of printed dramatic works from Singapore every year, but there were none at all this year. This does not mean that the theatrical scene in Singapore is less active. It is in fact enormously vibrant, as I hope my selection of newspaper reports and reviews of performances in the Bibliography will reveal. As in previous years, the vibrancy was less evident over in Malaysia, and this was partly due to the lack of reports and reviews of performances in Malaysian newspapers and journals, as contrasted to the situation in Singapore, and may not be a faithful reflection of the actual situation.

Poetry publications from Singapore continued to be well represented during the year. There were 11 volumes of poetry by individual poets and eight anthologies of poetry published. It should be noted that a number of writers have emerged as prolific contributors to the genre in various ways: Gwee Li Sui, Joshua Ip, Desmond Kon, Ng Yi-Sheng, Alvin Pang and Cyril Wong usually have either individual collections or edited volumes each year.

With regard to the writing and publication of poetry, there was the fear at one point in Singapore’s literary history that after the first generation of postcolonial poets in the English language, poetry would be giving way to the short story, to fiction in general, and to the dramatic arts. However, as developments in the past two decades have indicated, this did not turn out to be the case. There was a gap between the first generation of poets and the younger poets writing today, but the genre has clearly undergone a healthy revival, with a great number of poems written in the past two decades.

What is also noticeable this year is an interest in poetic forms. This is, in a way, a contrast to the freer approach to the writing of poetry of Singapore’s first generation of postcolonial poets. Joshua Ip, whose attraction to more formal poetry was illustrated by the publication of Sonnets from the Singlish (2012), reinforced this interest in co-editing two anthologies of poetry during the year: Twin Cities and Unfree Verse. These volumes bring into focus the fact that within the context of Singapore poetry the interest in form is historically more widespread, and has in fact grown with the younger generation of poets. The interest in form can also be seen in Desmond Kon’s Asingbol, a collection of haiku-like poems that are limited by a set number of characters.

The writing of poetry in English is less prominent in Malaysia. There was a single individual volume of poetry and two edited collections. An important name here is Malachi Edwin Vethamani, who is the writer of the only individual poetry collection and editor of one of the anthologies. The appeal of Vethamani’s own poetry is perhaps best encapsulated in the title of the review of his poems by the novelist Chuah Guat Eng: they “grab your attention and don’t let go”.

Fiction continues to be an important genre in both Malaysia and Singapore. There were nine volumes of fiction written by Malaysian writers. There was a good mix of Malaysian expatriate writers and those who remain in Malaysia. Ivy Ngeow’s Cry of the Flying Rhino won the Proverse Prize in Hong Kong in 2016 and was published in 2017.

As I write this introduction, Malaysia is undergoing a change of government after 61 years of rule by the same coalition of parties. An important novel that attempts to look at an earlier development of Malaysia’s history that led to the political change is Bernice Chauly’s Once We Were There. It deals with the “Reformasi” movement in Malaysian politics that started after the dismissal of Anwar Ibrahim as the Deputy Prime Minister and his expulsion from the once dominant political party, the United Malays National Organisation. Chauly was an activist at that time and her work, although fictional, is a reflection of what she herself experienced.

In Singapore, among the significant events pertaining to the publication of fiction was Epigram’s prize for the best fiction in English. The novel by the 2016 winner Nuraliah Norasid, The Gatekeeper, was published during the year. What is commendable about Epigram Books is the publication of not only the winner, but the novels of some of the other shortlisted and longlisted novels as well. As a result, Epigram published more than a handful of novels during the year, including the second novel by O Thiam Chin, Fox Fire Girl. O won the prize in 2015 for Now That It’s Over, and has made a name for himself as a writer of novels, having firmly established himself in the genre of the short story in previous years. During the year, Epigram also published another novel submitted for the competition, Jeremy Tiang’s controversial State of Emergency, mentioned earlier in relation to the withdrawal of NAC funding.

Some of the fiction published during the year fell quite easily into rather well-defined genre classifications. The perennial horror or supernatural stories can be seen in works by Raymus Chang, Nicky Moey and Janice Tay, in addition to the annual publication of The Almost Complete Collection of True Singapore Ghost Stories. Some of the novels look at a possible dystopian future for Singapore with an eye towards criticising certain tendencies in present-day Singapore. The novels by Nuraliah and Kevin Martens Wong, published by Epigram, and the two novels by Raymond Han (see Fiction) can be put into this category. Detective fiction is represented by Ovidia Yu, who has established herself (like the Malaysian novelist resident in Singapore, Shamini Flint) as a prolific writer in the genre, with two novels published during the year. The novels from Math Paper Press – Clarissa Goenawan’s Rainbirds and Daniel Goh’s The HDB Murders – also have elements of detection in them, but are less conventional examples of the genre than Yu’s works.

A noteworthy work of fiction by a writer who has been more associated with poetry is Gull between Heaven and Earth by Boey Kim Cheng. It deals with the life of the classical Chinese poet Du Fu and it is likely that the novel will be regarded both in its own right and as a companion to Boey’s poetry. Boey is an emigré Singapore author whose connection with the island state remains strong. The same description applies to Balli Kaur Jaswal and Kevin Kwan, whose fictional works, Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows and Rich People Problems received worldwide attention during the year and there were also plans to turn them into movies.