Malaysia and Singapore

Introduction

This is the second year that the Malaysian and Singaporean literary scenes were affected by the pandemic. Drama performances, which had been severely impacted in 2020, however, showed signs of recovering. While restrictions were still in place, live performances became more common from October onwards and increasingly more people were permitted to attend them. There was a concomitant relative decline in digitisation, which was an emergency reaction towards the inability to stage live performances in 2020 and the first nine months of 2021. However, despite its relative decline, digitisation is unlikely to be done away with completely in future years but will continue as a reinforcement or enhancement of live performance, if not its substitute.

For some theatre companies, the transformative effects of the pandemic were more substantial, as in the transformation of Checkpoint Theatre into a multimedia company. This began before the pandemic and was reported in the Introduction to the previous bibliography. The transformation was accelerated by the sense of urgency during the pandemic. The company now sees itself more as a collective of multi-disciplinary storytellers across different media than a clear-cut theatre company, and it has expanded, for example, into the publication of comics. Diversification, which has been hastened if not triggered by the pandemic, may very well be one of the strategies for survival for theatre companies in the region in the 21^st century.

While the pandemic dealt a brutal blow to live performances, which satisfactorily recovered only in the last quarter of 2021, there was no effect on the reading and writing of fiction and poetry. The boredom of being quarantined resulted not only in an increase in television watching but, as noted by the writer Josephine Chia in Channel News Asia, in reading as well. While Chia was referring to reading in general, it is certain that more local works were also read during the pandemic when compared to the time before it began.

As for writing, the effect of the pandemic was obviously not as negative as the effect on drama performance. Isolation might have helped to light a creative spark, and more importantly, if it was prolonged, it might sustain it. Kyla Zhao, for example, claimed that the loneliness arising from being quarantined helped her write her first novel, The Fraud Squad, whose publication rights were sold to Penguin Random House during an auction. Penguin also commissioned her to write her second novel, even before the completion of The Fraud Squad, which was slated to be published in 2023. Content-wise, the effect of the pandemic can be seen in books such as The Pandemic Files by Frederick Lim and the Malaysian anthology Lives under Lockdown: A Young Writers’ Anthology edited by Brigitte Rozario.

When it came to the publication of drama, however, there were no print publications in either Malaysia or Singapore. This had also been the case in 2020. The non-publication of dramatic works for two years running might be due to the pandemic, as the lack of performance or even the inability to perform for much of the two pandemic years, might have led to doubts about the usefulness of print publications of dramatic works. It is hoped that this is a temporary halt and would change in future years.

Poetry as an art form, however, does not need to be tied to performance, although there was a halt in its publication in Malaysia. This was not totally unforeseen, as the output for the publication of Malaysian poetry had been low for several years. In contrast with Singapore, there were no local publishers in Malaysia who were firmly committed to the publication of poetry, such as Ethos Books, Landmark Books and Math Paper Press across the border.

The publication of poetry in Singapore continued to be vibrant. In addition to the publishers mentioned above, there were also Firstfruits and Kitaab. Firstfruits was a publisher of some important volumes of Singaporean poetry in the 2010s, but has published poetry sporadically since. Given its credentials, it has attracted more established Singaporean poets to publish with it, such as Madeleine Lee in 2021 and Yeow Kai Chai in 2020. Kitaab was a newcomer to poetry publishing and published works by Neil Daswani.

Landmark Books and the oddly-named Math Paper Press were among the leading publishers of Singaporean poetry in English for many years and continued to lead in 2021. Landmark published four volumes of poetry, including collections by established poets Gwee Li Sui, Heng Siok Tian and Daryl Lim Wei Jie. Math Paper Press published three volumes, including collections by Joshua Ip and Pooja Nansi.

Unlike the publication of drama and poetry, the publication of Malaysian fiction remained healthy during the year. It is fair to say that recent Malaysian literature in English is largely represented and recognised by its fictional works, some of which have had a global impact. A clear majority of the fictional works in 2021 were published abroad. In fact, Malaysian writers need not go far to publish outside Malaysia, if they believe that it would result in a wider audience for their works. Most of the works were published across the border, in Singapore. The Singapore publisher, Epigram Books, for example, has been publishing Malaysian works for several years and, in 2021, they brought out H. Y. Yeang’s Blue Sky Mansion. But a major publisher of Malaysian fiction in 2021 was the Southeast Asian branch (SEA) of Penguin Random House, which is headquartered in Singapore.

I wrote about Penguin’s move into the region in the Introduction for the year 2019. At that time, we did not know how much of a presence it would become there. It published a collection of horror stories authored by a Malaysian in 2019 and by another Malaysian author in 2020. 2021 was a bumper year for the publication of Malaysian writers by Penguin, with eight fiction titles and three further titles classified under auto/biography and non-fiction. It is hoped that this abundance will be sustained. Among the writers published by Penguin were new writers of fiction, such as Shivani Sivagurunathan, but there were also writers who had published locally, before publishing with Penguin, such as Paul GnanaSelvam and Golda Mowe.

One of the writers who published abroad was the impressive writer of fantasy fiction, Zen Cho, with her Black Water Sister, an intriguing mix of the supernatural and lesbian identity in today’s Malaysia. She also published an expanded edition of Spirits Abroad. The earlier version of Spirits Abroad was published locally and analysed in an article by Grace Chin in 2021. Other fictional works published abroad were Y. Z. Chin’s Edge Case, on the problems faced by immigrants in America, and Felicia Yap’s Future Perfect, which like her first novel, Yesterday (2017), is a science-fiction thriller that reflects on the nature of time.

In spite of the large number of fictional works published overseas, the most anticipated fictional work by a Malaysian was published locally: Ellina Abdul Majid’s Crème de la Crime: PI Romy & The Have-Haves. Ellina is the writer of one of the significant English-language Malaysian novels in the previous century: Perhaps in Paradise (1997). She wrote another work of fiction, and co-wrote a collection of stories, both published in 1998 and less well known. It has been a wait of more than 20 years before the publication of another work of fiction by her.

As in its publication of Malaysian fiction, Penguin was also a major publisher of Singapore fiction during the year. It published eight titles, which were a clear increase from two titles each in 2019 and 2020. As in the Malaysian books published by Penguin, there is a predisposition towards genre fiction, although not all of the books are easy to classify into single genres. The veteran writer Audrey Chin’s The Ash House can be regarded as an example of gothic fiction, and Anjana Chaudhuri’s A Time for Murder and Grace Chia’s The Arches of Gerrard Street are murder mysteries. However, Chia’s novel includes elements of the bildungsroman, like Reuben Peter’s Softer Voices. Peter’s work, like Danny Jalil’s Enrique the Black, is a historical novel. The time span of Peter’s novel is the middle of the 20^th century, while Jalil’s work goes back several centuries to the beginning of western imperialism in Southeast Asia. Short fiction is represented by Mallika Naguran’s She Never Looks Quite Back and Vicky Chong’s Racket and Other Stories.

The top publisher of Singapore fiction for 2021 was the locally based Epigram Books, with 13 titles. Epigram’s strong interest in Singapore fiction and Southeast Asian fiction in general was shown by its fiction book prize. In 2021, the prize was awarded, for the first time, not to a single winner, but to two: Meihan Boey’s The Formidable Miss Cassidy and Sebastian Sim’s And the Award Goes to Sally Bong!. It is hard to choose between them: both are fictional works that do not only depend on the power of narrative, but on a lively, often humorous style of writing as well.

A noteworthy tendency in Singapore fiction was writers publishing two books during the year. Ning Cai’s Manipulation and Metamorphosis are part of the Savant trilogy (the first volume was published in 2018). The trilogy could be compared to the Malaysian Tunku Halim’s Midnight Children trilogy, also published by Penguin, which like Ning Cai’s trilogy, are classified as books meant for younger readers. However, Daryl Qilin Yam’s Lovelier, Lonelier and Shantih Shantih Shantih are not part of a series and were brought out by different publishers: the former by Epigram and the latter by Math Paper Press. This is also the case with Grace Chia’s The Arches of Gerrard Street and White Cloud Mountain, which were respectively published by Penguin and Epigram. The two works firmly established Chia, who was previously known largely as a poet, as a novelist, with three novels published: her first novel came out in 2016. The noticeable hesitancy or reluctance to write fiction, which was the case with Singaporean English-language writers some decades ago, is no longer there.

The number of Singapore fictional books in 2021 was high (29 volumes), but this is not unusual: there were comparable figures for 2017 and 2018. What was unique was the dominance of just two publishers: Penguin and Epigram. Other publishers which had been more productive in past years, published no fictional works in 2021 or, as in the case of Ethos Books, Marshall Cavendish and Math Paper Press, only one volume each. If they faced problems, it is hoped that this would not affect their output in future years.

One literary publisher that faced a problem was Math Paper Press, with a scandal involving its owner, who subsequently stopped managing the press. Indications for the next year, however, are that, with its new management, it has not stopped publication of local creative works. However, it is not clear whether it would maintain its high productive output, as seen, for example, in its publication of poetry, noted above.

I would like to devote the rest of the Introduction to comments on local scholarship on the English-language literature of the two countries as a good number of the publications on the literature are done by academics in local institutions. Looking at Malaysian literature, the number of publications on the literature during the year is noteworthy. Research on Malaysian literature in English is increasing, and there were a few factors that have helped its maintenance and growth. One factor was the proliferation of online academic journals published by Malaysian universities. While one may question the quality of some of these journals and the articles published in them, the other extreme is no publications, which might be the adverse consequence of limited and unrealistic notions of quality in academic publishing. The notion of quality is not helped by the belief that quality publications are more likely to be on mainstream literature than on areas such as postcolonial literature, which is an attitudinal problem that is not entirely done away with in academic institutions today.

The relative freedom by which academics in Malaysia published their works can be contrasted to their more restrictive Singaporean counterparts. A more restrictive attitude limits the number of publications, the literary works analysed and discussions of aspects of these works. At a general level, this leads to insufficient scholarship in particular research areas, whereas a more liberal attitude leads to a more adequate and varied research output, which is now gradually emerging in the research on Malaysian literature.

The lack of scholarship, which can be seen, in my view, in the more serious academic research on Singapore literature, is a paradoxical situation, as it is the result of the ostensible pursuit of academic excellence. The contrast between the two countries is of course relative. Good research on Singapore literature in English is still being done at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore, which is also a hive of activity in organising talks, conferences and other events on Singapore literature and its writers. NTU also has one of the leading researchers of Singapore and regional literatures in English today: Angelia Poon.

However, the interest in Malaysian literature is more widespread in Malaysian universities and not largely centred in just a single university. This is reflective of the greater interest in the humanities in Malaysian institutions of higher learning across the board. There is a contrast here with their Singaporean counterparts, which have drifted even more towards technical and practical disciplines in recent years. This drift was not helped by the sudden announcement during the year of the closure of Yale-NUS, which had been the only liberal-arts college in Singapore for several years. In this context, another paradox is that the leading Singaporean institution for the country’s literature in English has the word “Technological” in its name. This suggests NTU’s ambition to go beyond its reputation as a premier technological university and to become the top comprehensive university in Singapore.

A more flexible academic environment and a stronger general interest in the humanities across the border have helped important researchers in Malaysian literature such as Grace Chin and Mohammad Quayum to thrive. Chin is now at Universiti Sains Malaysia, whereas Quayum, who is now at Flinders University in Australia, spent many years at the International Islamic University in Kuala Lumpur, where he developed a formidable reputation as a researcher in Malaysian literature in English, among other areas of research.