Reading home
In conjunction with the upcoming Merdeka Day celebrations this month, we celebrate local books with a weekly 10- part series on the evolution of the Malaysian novel in English.
NO, sarcasm isn’t intended in the title of this series. It simply reflects the popular perception that Malaysians seldom, if ever, read Malaysian novels in English ( MNE) – apart, of course, from the half- dozen or so that have won international literary prizes in recent years. If this perception is our reality, then we simply have to accept that the bulk of Malaysian novels in English belongs in that universal pile of unappreciated and forgotten books, sometimes referred to as “the great unread”.
This doesn’t mean, however, that we can’t talk about them.
According to Italian literary scholar Franco Moretti, one doesn’t have to – indeed, can’t – read every novel in a particular society or era in order to understand and comment on the genre’s development, its evolution as a literary art form, and its social and cultural dimensions. But how do we talk about novels we haven’t read and probably will never read? Well, we can talk about them based on vague impressions, anecdotal hearsay, and subjective or ideologically- coloured opinions; or, we can talk about them based on facts, statistics, and documented history. This series is for those who prefer the second alternative.
In these articles, I will explore the development of the MNE from 1965 to 2014. I have chosen 1965 as my starting point because that was the year Singapore left the Malaysian Federation, leaving us the Malaysia we know now, and I stop at 2014 because it is difficult to talk about developmental trends while they are still unfolding. My focus is on the social dimensions of the genre, and not on the novels’ literary aspects. No attempt will be made to foreground the literary merits of any individual novel. Instead, I shall discuss developments and trends in three inter- related areas without which no literature ( or any tradition of writing) can exist or be sustained. These are: the community of writers; the publishing scene; and, the activities undertaken by society to build up a community of readers.
The 50 years of development being explored are divided into three periods, which I will examine in detail in future articles. The first, from 1965 to 1993, I call “Lean Years” because relatively few novels were published – my research shows that only 17 new novels by local writers were published during those 28 years, all written by men born either well before or soon after the Second World War.
The theme of the second period, from 1994 to 2003, is “New Initiatives And New Paradigms”. In 1994, the MNE landscape changed in some fundamental ways, the full effects of which became obvious only in the 21st century. These include the increase in women novelists, the rise of self- publishing ( who often utilised the then- newly available Internet to market their works, and the supportive role of universities in expanding the community of readers.
The third period, from 2004 to 2014, is given the title “Going Global”. During this decade, we witnessed a sudden and fairly well- sustained increase in the number of new “Malaysian” novels published each year. These new novels were not limited to those written by locally- based Malaysian citizens; many were by members of the “Malaysian diaspora”, former Malaysians who had chosen to be either citizens or permanent residents of other countries, while a few were by expatriates or foreign nationals residing in Malaysia. The other “global” aspect in this decade was the dynamic expansion of Internet- based social networking applications, which made it possible for writers and publishers to reach potential readers and book buyers locally and internationally.
The entry of the diaspora writers into the domain of locally- based writers was unsettling in two ways. On the positive side, the fact that their works had been published by major international publishing houses and won internationally prestigious literary prizes had a catalytic effect on the MNE scene. Locally- based writers were encouraged to take on the challenge of writing novels instead of short stories, local and regional publishing houses opened their doors to aspiring novelists, and a number of enterprising individuals were motivated to set up their own independent publishing concerns.
On the other hand, the propensity of diaspora and expatriate novelists to identify themselves and their works as “Malaysian” led to much debate and quite a bit of soul- searching among locals as to how the term “Malaysian novels in English” should be defined. I do not, however, intend to engage in these debates in my articles.
For my purpose, “Malaysian novels in English” is defined as book- length ( min. 75,000 words), single- story, fictional prose narratives published after 1965 and originally written in English by writers who present themselves ( e. g. in interviews and biographical notes) as having some kind of “homeland” relationship with Malaysia.
I define this relationship in three ways. The first is the “only homeland” relationship of those Malaysians who are born, bred and live here. The second is the “former homeland” relationship, that of the Malaysian diaspora. The third is the “second homeland” relationship of a foreign national who, for personal or professional reasons, now or in the past, has made a second home in Malaysia.
I’d like to conclude this brief overview of the explorations to come with a note of thanks to the Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, Universiti Putra Malaysia, which funded my research from 2011 to 2013 under the Post- Doctoral Research Fellowship Scheme. The aim of the research was to develop a non- ethnocentric, sociology- based approach for MNE studies.