The Malaysian Writers Society presents a decade of quality short stories in The Best of Malaysian Short Fiction in English 2010–2020. A wish for better weather has unexpected consequences. A pianist finds an unlikely audience in her next-door neighbour. A girl attempts Mount Kinabalu only to regret it. Curated by editors Zhui Ning Chang and JY Tan, The Best of Malaysian Short Fiction in English 2010–2020 spans the speculative and realist to thrillers and drama. It explores the bold new directions of contemporary Malaysian writing and hints at the new heights of our future national literature. The Best of Malaysian Short Fiction in English 2010–2020 includes: Hugo Award winner Zen Cho; 2019 Commonwealth Short Story Prize Regional Winner Saras Manickam; Fixi Novo Contest winners Terence Toh and Chua Kok Yee; and USA Today bestselling author Cassandra Khaw.

A simple spice can open up meditations on love and life. In food, we find connection to one another, like a homesick student searching for the perfect cup of teh tarik. Yet, paradoxically, food is a polarizer, like a Muslim convert craving a pork bun. From tracing the origins of our hawker food to a love letter for Ipoh told in local favourites, these works are an eclectic mix of the Malaysian obsession with food. For all our differences, Malaysians find commonality in one thing: we want you to be well-fed. Savour these small packages of good writing, covering a wide array of foods to please every palate, from laksa and sambal telur belimbing to french fries and Bru coffee. Come for the carbs. Stay for the whole menu. Featuring work by award-winning author Elaine Chiew, DK Dutt Memorial Award founder Dipika Mukherjee, and celebrated professor and poet Dr Malachi Edwin Vethamani.

When Malaysians talk about "harmony", most of the time they're referring to racial (and religious) harmony. Yet in this collection of 10 (plus 2!) works, we also explore the vast expanse of what harmony is: from being at peace with oneself, familial relations, and the cyclical nature of life. From office melodrama and musings at the laundromat to imaginative settings of fantasy, mythology and dystopia, our writers show us that harmony takes many forms. NutMag 8: Harmony also hosts the Muara Writing Prize winners for English and Bahasa Malaysia, organised with the George Town Literary Festival 2024.

This book brings together fourteen articles by prominent critics of Malaysian Anglophone literature from five different countries: Australia, Italy, Malaysia, Singapore, and the US. It investigates the thematic and stylistic trends in the literary products of selected writers of the tradition in the genres of drama, fiction, and poetry, from its beginnings to the present, focusing mainly on the postcolonial themes of ethnicity, gender, diaspora, and nationalism, which are central to the creativity and imagination of these writers. The book explores the works of not just the established writers of the tradition but also those who have received little critical attention to date but who are equally gifted, such as Adibah Amin, Edward Dorall, Rehaman Rashid, and Huzir Suleiman. The chapters collectively address the challenges and achievements of writers in the English language in a country where English is widely used in daily life and yet marginalised in the creative domain to elevate the status of writings in the national language, i.e., Bahasa Malaysia. The book will demonstrate that in spite of such recurrent neglect of the medium, Malaysia has produced a number of outstanding writers in the language, who are comparable in creativity and craftsmanship to writers of other Anglophone traditions. The book will be of interest to readers and researchers of Malaysian literature, postcolonial literatures, minority literatures, gender studies, and Southeast Asian studies.

This book comprises a collection of essays that address a significant gap in the study of Malaysian Literature in English by exploring selected local and diasporic writings produced in the new postcolonial millennium, including works by established, emerging, and new writers. The literary developments in this new millennium have been substantial and are reflected in the production of new voices, viewpoints, themes, trends, styles, and forms. By articulating these changing postcolonial perspectives and conditions, the chapters in this volume can inform and enrich the study of nation, society, and culture in a globalized and hyperreal age. Tapping into the difference, diversity, and hybridity of 21st-century historicized and glocalized multicultural Malaysia, the millennium writings explore the changing identities and relations and their social, cultural, and political dimensions through the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and class. By examining new, different, or changing ideas, forms, themes, and representations, this book considers the vital ways the millennium voices and viewpoints can potentially help us critically rethink and resituate postcolonial studies on Malaysia as they spotlight challenges and new directions in the field. The book will be of interest to researchers, academics, and scholars in the field of Malaysian writing in English, Southeast Asian literature, Asian literature, diaspora, and literary studies. The chapters in the book were originally published as a special issue in the Journal of Postcolonial Writing.

This polyphonic collection of twenty-five stories presents a multitude of Malaysian perspectives spanning age, gender, and class. Yow char kwai hawkers compete for customers on a busy city street. Marital dynamics unfurl at an abortion clinic. On an island, a man's infatuation with a veiled woman takes a supernatural turn. A woman writes to her brother about their dead cat. Characters in these stories connect through chance encounters and fateful events. Their narratives are inevitably coloured by the social tension and occasional absurdities of a multicultural society. Shortlisted for the 2009 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Prize.

The Sum of Our Follies is a novel set in Lubok Sayong, an imaginary Malaysian town. Two narrators describe Lubok Sayong and its community of quirky inhabitants. The first is Auyong, a retiree from the city who operates a lychee factory in Lubok Sayong. The other is eleven-year-old Mary Anne, an orphan who is taken in by an irascible woman in charge of the Big House. Through anecdotes and gentle humour, the two narrators observe the events that change the town and their lives as modernity sets in and Mary Anne grows up.

Malaysians have been looking forward to this talismanic year for decades. In fact, we started anticipating it when our seventh Prime Minister was still our fourth. Is 2020 really the year when we suddenly become a modern, progressive society that is the envy of the world? Or have things stagnated and ossified beyond repair? Don’t answer all at once! 2020: An Anthology brings together 20 pieces — mostly fiction, but some essays and a comic too — that reflect on our nation by focusing on our people, who continue to thrive and flail and exist in ways that will never be captured by even the most visionary slogans. Edited by FOO SEK HAN & LEON WING. Featuring: M. KUMAR, IVY NGEOW, NATASHA GIDEON, ANUAR SHAH, RAJA UMMI NADRAH, CATALINA REMBUYAN, WILLIAM THAM WAI LIANG, LINGES, PAUL GNANASELVAM, ANGELINE WOON, EDWIN KHO, ZED ADAM IDRIS, TERENCE TOH, CHRIS QUAH, ANNA TAN, TINA ISAACS, MAY CHONG, LEE EE LEEN & NATHANIEL SARIO. (Buku Fixi) (Fixi Novo)

Set in different cities around the world, Elaine Chiew's award-winning stories travel into the heart of the Singaporean and Malaysian Chinese diasporas to explore the lives of those torn between cultures and juggling divided selves. In the title story, four writers find their cultural bonds of friendship tested when a handsome young Asian writer joins their group. In other stories, a brother searches for his sister forced to serve as a comfort woman during World War Two; three Singaporean sisters run a French gourmet restaurant in New York; a woman raps about being a Tiger Mother in Belgravia; and a filmmaker struggles to document the lives of samsui women—Singapore's thrifty, hardworking construction workers. > Acutely observed, wry and playful, her stories are as worldly and emotionally resonant as the characters themselves. This fabulous debut collection heralds an exciting new literary voice.