Book Review: The Routledge Concise History of Southeast Asian Writing in English (Review by Zafar Anjum, S’pore)

The Routledge Concise History of Southeast Asian Writing in English

By Rajeev S. Patke and Philip Holden

Routledge, 272 pp

It can be argued that Southeast Asian Writing in English has not achieved as much attention as African Writing in English or Indian Writing in English, even though English as a language reached most parts of the world wave after wave as a result of colonialism in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Manila have been major outposts under British and American colonialism, but the output in English from these big Asian cities has not made much impact on the global literary landscape, the same way that writings from India or Africa have. Where is Southeast Asia’s answer to Midnight Children or a House for Mr. Biswas or Things Fall Apart?

Pauline Melville’s top 10 revolutionary tales

Pauline Melville’s first book, Shape-shifter, won the Guardian fiction prize, the Macmillan Silver Pen award and a Commonwealth Writers’ prize. Her first novel was shortlisted for the Orange prize and won a Whitbread prize. She is also an actor – whose work has encompassed roles in Mona Lisa, Utz and Far from the Madding Crowd, as well as appearances in comedies including Blackadder and the Young Ones.

“As a child I wanted to be a trapeze artist. Under the bed I kept a tiny suitcase which contained a red sweater. I was always ready to leave if things didn’t suit me. In books too I was definitely looking for danger and adventure. Without moralising over the rights and wrongs of what, depending on your point of view, is called either terrorism or freedom-fighting, I wanted to write a book that…

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Herta Müller takes Nobel prize for literature

German novelist Herta Müller, who received death threats in her native Romania after she refused to become an informant for the secret police during Ceausescu’s totalitarian regime, has become only the 12th woman in 108 years to win the Nobel prize for literature.

Praised by the Nobel judges for depicting the “landscape of the dispossessed” with “the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose”, Müller returns constantly to the oppression, dictatorship and exile of her own life in her novels, essays and poems.

In a statement this afternoon Müller said she was “delighted” by the award, and “still couldn’t believe it”.