Lloyd Fernando

LLOYD FERNANDO

-          Lloyd Fernando was born in Sri Lanka on May 31, 1926.

-          Followed his family to Singapore where he grew up and received his

      education.

-          When his parents decided to return to Sri Lanka, the sixteen-year-old Fernando decided to stay behind.

-          He continued to fund his education by taking odd jobs like working as a labourer, trishaw rider and an apprentice mechanic.

-          He later took part time jobs as a radio broadcasting assistant and newsreader.

-          He successfully graduated with double Honours degrees in English and Philosophy from the University of Singapore.

-          He later went on to acquire his PhD from the University of Leeds.

-          He began teaching at University of Malaya in 1967, and was head of the English Department for a period.

-          Whilst lecturing at the University, Fernando took up law purely by chance, and later decided to be a lawyer in order to not stop working upon reaching a retirement age.

-          In 1978, he left the academic profession to concentrate on his law profession.

-          He began writing at the age of fifteen.

-          He describes writing as taking snapshots of the society and showing the reality without being sentimental.

HIS WORKS

-          Fernando approaches his writing in a very disciplined manner.

-          He begins writing at eight in the morning , and only takes breaks for lunch and tea.

-          His first novel, Scorpion Orchid presents the story of four university friends of different ethnic background: Sabran, a Malay; Santinathan, an Indian; Guan Kheng, a Chinese; and Peter, a Eurasian.

-          His second novel, Green is the Colour is a story about four individuals – Sara, Yun Ming, Dahlan and Gita, again of different racial/cultural background brought together through friendship or mutual acquaintance after the bloody May 1969 riots.

-          The third instalment to Fernando’s prose is his sh0rt story Surja Singh, the story of a 28-year-old soldier who lives through the Japanese Occupation and later, the return of the British.

SUMMARY OF GREEN IS THE COLOR

Lloyd Fernando's Green is the Colour is a very interesting novel. The country is still scarred by violence, vigilante groups roam the countryside, religious extremists set up camp in the hinterland, there are still sporadic outbreaks of fighting in the city, and everyone, all the time, is conscious of being watched. It comes as some surprise to find that the story is actually a contemporary (and very clever) reworking of a an episode from the Misa Melayu, an 18th century classic written by Raja Chulan.

In this climate of unease, Fernando employs a multi-racial cast of characters. At the centre of the novel there's a core of four main characters, good (if idealistic) young people who cross the racial divide to become friends, and even fall in love.

There's Dahlan, a young lawyer and activist who invites trouble by making impassioned speech on the subject of religious intolerance on the steps of a Malacca church; his friend from university days, Yun Ming, a civil servant working for the Ministry of Unity who seeks justice by working from within the government.

The most fully realised character of the novel is Siti Sara, and much of the story is told from her viewpoint. A sociologist and academic, she's newly returned from studies in America where she found life much more straightforward, and trapped in a loveless marriage to Omar, a young man much influenced by the Iranian revolution who seeks purification by joining religious commune. The hungry passion between Yun Ming and Siti - almost bordering on violence at times and breaking both social and religious taboos - is very well depicted. (Dahlan falls in love with Gita, Sara's friend and colleague, and by the end of the novel has made an honest woman of her.)

Like the others, Sara is struggling to make sense of events :

Nobody could get may sixty-nine right, she thought. It was hopeless to pretend you could be objective about it. speaking even to someone close to you, you were careful for fear the person might unwittingly quote you to others. if a third person was present, it was worse, you spoke for the other person's benefit. If he was Malay you spoke one way, Chinese another, Indian another. even if he wasn't listening. in the end the spun tissue, like an unsightly scab, became your vision of what happened; the wound beneath continued to run pus.

Although the novel is narrated from a third person viewpoint, it is curious that just one chapter is narrated by Sara's father, one of the minor characters, an elderly village imam and a man of great compassion and insight. This shift in narration works so well that I'm surprised Fernando did not make wider use of it.

The novel has villain, of course, the unsavoury Pangalima, a senior officer in the Department of Unity and a man of uncertain racial lineage (he looks Malay, has adopted Malay culture, so of course, that's enough to make him kosher!). He has coveted Sara for years, and is determined to win her sexual favours at any cost.

The novel is not without significant weaknesses. It isn't exactly a rollicking read, and seems rather stilted - not least because there are just too many talking heads with much of the action taking place "offstage", including the rape at the end, which is really the climax of the whole novel.

If we're interested in Yun Ming, Dahlan and Omar it is because of the contradictory ideas they espouse, but in each case their arguments could have been explored in greater depth and the characters themselves have been more fully fleshed.

The plot of Green is the Colour never really holds together as well as it might but seems to be perpetually rushing off in new directions (as actually do the characters!) without fully exploring what is set up already. (I was particularly disappointed that we don't get to spend more time with Omar in the commune.)

But the strengths of the novel more than makes up for these lapses.

There's been a lot of talk about local authors not being brave enough to write about the great mustn't-be-talked-abouts of race, religion and politics in Malaysian society. Here's one author who was brave enough to do just that. (And look, hey, the sky didn't cave in!)

Here's an author too who was able to think himself into the skin of people of different races - how many since have been able, or prepared, to make that imaginative leap?

Here too is an author who is able to convincingly evoke the landscape of Malaysia both urban and rural in carefully chosen details.

Above all, though, one feels that here is an author who says what needed to be said. Heck, what still needs to be said!

Here, he's using Dahlan as his mouthpiece, but the sentiments are clearly the author's own :

All of us must make amends. Each and every one of us has to make an individual effort. Words are not enough. We must show by individual actions that we will not tolerate bigotry and race hatred.

SUMMARY SCORPION ORCHID

The plot entwines four young men of differing ethnic make-up: Santinathan is a Tamil, Guan Kheng a Chinese, Sabran a Malay and Peter D'Almeida a Eurasian. The four of them were former schoolmates and now attends the Singapore university, all in their third year. The story follows them as they become embroiled with the racial riots in Singapore during the 1950s. A distinctive feature of Scorpion Orchid lies in fourteen italicized passages of varying length, drawn from traditional Malayan texts and interwoven into the narrative.

Tan Twan Eng

Tan Twan Eng was born in Penang, Malaysia. He divides his time between Kuala Lumpur and Cape Town.

The Gift of Rain, his first novel, was Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. It has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Greek, Romanian, Czech and Serbian.

His second and latest novel, The Garden of Evening Mists, was published in September 2012. It has been Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012. Boyd Tonkin in The Independent called it:

'an elegant and haunting novel of art and war and memory...Tan writes with breath-catching poise and grace, linguistic refinement and searching intelligence...His fictional garden cultivates formal harmony -but also undermines it. It unmasks sophisticated artistry as a partner of pain and lies. This duality invests the novel with a climate of doubt; a mood - as with Aritomo's creation - of "tension and possibility". Its beauty never comes to rest.'

It has been translated/will be translated into German, French, Italian, Serbian, Spanish, Dutch, Polish, Taiwanese Chinese, Indonesian, Korean and Norwegian.

The Garden of Evening Mists won the Man Asian Literary Prize in March 2013.

In June it won the Walter Scott Prize 2013, from a shortlist of authors which included Hilary Mantel, Rose Tremain, Thomas Keneally, Pat Barker and Anthony Quinn.

The Gift of Rain was an astonishing accomplishment. Its protagonist is the half-British, half-Chinese Philip Hutton, the youngest (and only mixed-race) child of a powerful British trading family based in Malaysia. On the eve of World War II, the gorgeous islands show no hint of the devastation about to unfold, and young Philip finds himself befriending an elegant Japanese man, Hayato Endo, who has taken residence on the tiny island across the Hutton estate.

Endo begins to train Philip in the Japanese martial art aikido, transforming the distant teen into a strong and confident young man. But nothing is as it appears, and as the much-feared Japanese military finally lands on Malaysian shores, surviving the war will mean betrayal and redemption, and ultimately love.

The Garden of Evening Mists arrives stateside with Booker-longlist approval, announced just weeks before the U.S. publication date. This time, Tan's protagonist is a damaged, wary woman, Teoh Yun Ling, who has just taken early retirement from a lauded career as a respected judge; she has at most a year before she will lose all language and memory to aphasia.

She leaves Kuala Lumpur for the highlands of central Malaysia to Yugiri -- the eponymous Garden of Evening Mists -- where she's agreed to meet a Japanese scholar writing a book about Yugiri's creator, Aritomo, the self-exiled former gardener to the emperor of Japan. Four decades earlier, in spite of being the single survivor of a murderous World War II Japanese prison camp, Yun Ling apprenticed herself to Aritomo; she sublimated her fear and loathing in the hopes of learning to create the perfect garden to honor her older sister who died in the camp. Almost thirty-eight years have passed since Aritomo disappeared, and now threatened with erasure, Yun Ling begins to record her, his -- their story.

In both unforgettable novels, Tan manages to intertwine the redemptive power of storytelling with the elusive search for truth, all the while juxtaposing Japan's inhumane war history with glorious moments of Japanese art and philosophy. His is a challenging balancing act, and yet he never falters, intimately revealing his stories with power and grace.

Sybil Kathigasu

Sybil Kathigasu is the only Malaysian woman ever to be awarded the George Medal, Britain's highest civilian award for bravery.

      Sybil Kathigasu (1899-1949), commonly known as Mrs K or Missy, was an Indian woman who willingly sacrificed her life for the Malayan Peoples' Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) members who fought for the independence of Malaya. She seems to be a rarity because: 

she was well known in Ipoh;

        She remained alive, despite having been found guilty by a Japanese military court; she had sustained injuries which were treatable, but not in Malaya; and she was highly commended by the Malayan Peoples' Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA), led by the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM), then allies of the British.

    Brief biography: 

Born to an Irish-Eurasian father and an Indian mother in Medan, Sybil Kathigasu was a nurse who married Dr. Cecil Kathigasu. They had met while he was working in the Kuala Lumpur General Hospital, where she was training to be a nurse and midwife. Sybil and Cecil married in 1919. They subsequently operated a clinic at No. 141, Brewster Road, Ipoh and then at No. 74, Main Street, Papan as a result of a 'chance' evacuation.

On 1 August 1942, 3 days after her husband was arrested in Perak by the Japanese occupiers, Sybil was arrested. They were detained separately in a police lock-up in Ipoh, and then in a Kempetei interrogation center on the outskirts of Ipoh. The detainees in the Kempetei center had to kneel down like dogs to enter the cell, and were treated to horrendous tortures. Men and women shared the same cells. (The Kathigasu's children, William (25 years old in 1943) and Dawn (7 years) were also briefly held and tortured at the Kempetei center.) During their interrogation and trial, Sybil and her husband did not reveal anything which could expose and weaken the communist resistance. (It is no wonder that the communists called Sybil "mother" (page 80), apart from the fact that she gave them medical treatment.)

Sybil was held in the Batu Gajah prison, while awaiting trial against 3 charges:

acting as a spy on behalf of and in cooperation with the enemy agents in Malaya;

giving medical attention and other assistance to the Communist guerrillas and outlaws; and

possessing a radio set, listening to enemy broadcasts, and disseminating enemy propaganda.

The Forgotten History of Sybil Kathigasu

(Uploaded by shuchyi on 25 April 2011)

Each of these charges carries a death sentence. It was during this time that she uttered a prayer:

"Great Saint Anthony, please intercede for me with the Infant Jesus to give me the strength and courage to bear bravely what God's Holy Will has ordained for me. Let me face death, if I must, in the spirit of the Holy Martyrs. But if I am spared to write a book about what I have undergone, I promise that the proceeds from the sale of the book shall go to building a church in your name, in Ipoh, and, if there is any over when the church is completed, to the relief of the poor and suffering, whatever their race or religion. Please help me, Saint Anthony." — Kathigasu, Sybil. No Dram of Mercy (2006), pp. 162. Prometheus)

A few weeks after the prayer, Sybil was tried in an office in the prison. Refusing to accept legal representation, she pleaded guilty to all the 3 charges and was sentenced to life-imprisonment. Sybil began serving her sentence in the same prison, and remained there till the Japanese surrendered. During the 3 years, she was subjected to torture, humiliation, isolation, cold, insects, and starvation.

In No Dram of Mercy, Sybil writes that on the day that she arrived home – in a car arranged for her by the Malayan Peoples' Anti-Japanese Army ("well clothed, armed and equipped by British") – two British Officers of Force 136 were waiting for her. She notes: "The British officers, who had responsibility for military intelligence, took down in outline the story of my experiences, and then asked me if there was any way in which they could help me." (Page 180) She had 2 requests:

The release of her husband and son from the Taiping Prison; and

The "best medical attention available" so that she would be able to walk again, with a promise that she would pay for whatever it cost.

On the last page of her book, Sybil reports the response of the officers: "You shall have the best treatment, and it will be entirely at Government expense. We are authorized to tell you that the British military authorities will have your injuries treated exactly as if you had been wounded in battle." (Page 180)

Published Works

No Dram of Mercy (Neville Spearman, 1954; reprinted Oxford University Press, 1983 and Prometheus Enterprises, 2006)

Faces of Courage: A Revealing Historical Appreciation of Colonial Malaya's Legendary Kathigasu Family by Norma Miraflor & Ian Ward (2006)

Tash Aw

Tash Aw,  or his full name, Aw Tash Shi is the son of Malaysian parents, was born in the Taiwanese capital of Taipei in 1971. When he was two years old his family moved back to their native land. Aw grew up in Kuala Lumpur and was educated at a catholic school before moving to Britain with his family, where he studied law at Cambridge and Warwick. Upon graduation he settled in London where he took on various jobs before eventually working as a lawyer. At the same time he was writing short stories and embarked on his first novel. In 2002 he completed his degree at the School of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia with his début novel and in 2005 “The Harmony Silk Factory” appeared.

The book is set in British-governed Malaysia in 1940, shortly before the Japanese invasion. In the first part a son tells the story of his father Johnny Lim, a two-timing cloth dealer and communist underground fighter who by dubious means worked his way out of the gutter and became the wealthiest man in the valley. His “harmony silk factory” was also used as the site of political resistance as well as a meeting place for smugglers and racketeers. He married the beautiful Snow Soong, who died while giving birth to their son. In the second part of the novel Soong narrates, in journal entries, their trip to the “Seven Maiden Islands” and sheds an entirely different light on her husband, who – boyish and aloof – is tormented by horrible dreams. The third shift in perspective unfolds by means of a report by Johnny Lim’s only friend, who portrays him in this last part in unexpected ways: this time as a cuckolded husband and loyal friend.

    

In the year 2005, Aw was nominated for the Booker Prize  and that same year was awarded both the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for the best first novel and the Whitbread First Novel Award. His work has since been translated into twenty languages.

He works for the BBC on a regular basis, commenting on literature, film and culture in Southeast Asia. The author is currently working on his second novel, set in Malaysia and Indonesia in the sixties. He lives in London.

Phoebe is a factory girl who has come to Shanghai with the promise of a job - but when she arrives she discovers that the job doesn't exist. Gary is a country boy turned pop star who is spinning out of control. Justin is in Shanghai to expand his family's real estate empire, only to find that he might not be up to the task. He has long harbored a crush on Yinghui, a poetry-loving, left-wing activist who has reinvented herself as a successful Shanghai businesswoman. Yinghui is about to make a deal with the shadowy Walter Chao, the five star billionaire of the novel, who with his secrets and his schemes has a hand in the lives of each of the characters. All bring their dreams and hopes to Shanghai, the shining symbol of the New China, which, like the novel's characters, is constantly in flux and which plays its own fateful role in the lives of its inhabitants.

This novel juxtaposes three accounts of the life of an enigmatic man at a pivotal and haunting moment in Malaysian history. The author slices his first novel into three segments, wherein three characters dissect the nature of Johnny Lim, a controversial figure in 1940s Malaysia. Depending on the teller, Johnny was a Communist leader, an informer for the Japanese, a dangerous black-market trader, a working-class Chinese man too in awe of his aristocratic wife to have sex with her, or a loyal friend. Long after Johnny's death, we hear these conflicting accounts of his life.

After 16-year-old Adam de Willigen's adoptive father, Karl, is arrested by Indonesian soldiers, stranding Adam in their remote island village, he sets off for Jakarta to find him. Meanwhile, American ex-pat professor Margaret Bates is reminded of her teenage love for Karl after an embassy contact informs her he's been arrested. Soon, Adam arrives on Margaret's doorstep, and though practical, good-natured Margaret has never felt any maternal longings, the two bond instantly. Their search for Karl continues amid the riots and protests filling the city streets, but is interrupted when Adam is kidnapped by a Communist student with a sinister agenda. With the help of a friend, Margaret uses every ounce of diplomacy she has to find Karl and Adam and construct the family she's discovered she's wanted all along.