By The Book

To mark the 25th anniversary of The Women’s Prize for Fiction, a campaign called “Reclaim Her Name” was run to give “female writers the credit they deserve”. In line with this, 25 special editions of novels were reprinted using the real names of 26 women writers who used male pseudonyms - including the likes of George Eliot, Vernon Lee, and George Sand. We discuss the idea behind this initiative, the notion of writers’ pseudonyms, and whether these names need to be “reclaimed” at all. And in Footnotes, we discuss this year’s Women’s Prize shortlist and winners.

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Communism, a handover of power, the importance of journalism, frustrated love, and a central familial mystery. All these threads are woven together in William Tham's novel, The Last Days, which is set under the shadow of the Malayan Emergency. We discuss the research and process of putting this work together, and the pressure of writing about this particular time in history. And then in Footnotes, we review the book!

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One of few Malaysian authors to be published internationally, Hanna Alkaf prides herself on writing unabashedly Malaysian stories. Following the success of her YA book “The Weight of our Sky”, she’s back with “The Girl and the Ghost”, a middle-grade title about a young Malaysian girl and a pelesit that finds its way into her life. But along the way, Hanna also unfolds a tale of friendships, growing up, and staying true to oneself. We speak with Hanna about her process of writing the book, and the kinds of stories she likes to write.

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2020 is a year that has always loomed large in the Malaysian imagination - a year when we would be a fully developed country (whatever that means), and really come into our own (ditto). 2020: An Anthology is all about exploring what 2020 means to 20 Malaysian writers, and filtering this year and its promise through short pieces of writing. We sit down and discuss our favourites, and how it feels to have read this book about 2020, in a version of it that is beyond what many of us could have imagined. Then in Footnotes, we try to picture what fiction and writing about a decolonised future might look like.

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2020 is a year that has always loomed large in the Malaysian imagination - a year when we would be a fully developed country (whatever that means), and really come into our own (ditto). 2020: An Anthology is all about exploring what 2020 means to 20 Malaysian writers, and filtering this year and its promise through short pieces of writing. We sit down and discuss our favourites, and how it feels to have read this book about 2020, in a version of it that is beyond what many of us could have imagined. Then in Footnotes, we try to picture what fiction and writing about a decolonised future might look like.

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2020 is a year that has always loomed large in the Malaysian imagination - a year when we would be a fully developed country (whatever that means), and really come into our own (ditto). 2020: An Anthology is all about exploring what 2020 means to 20 Malaysian writers, and filtering this year and its promise through short pieces of writing. We sit down and discuss our favourites, and how it feels to have read this book about 2020, in a version of it that is beyond what many of us could have imagined. Then in Footnotes, we try to picture what fiction and writing about a decolonised future might look like.

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Salman Rushdie might be best known for his fifth book, The Satanic Verses - which resulted in a fatwa against him in 1989 - but a dive into his body work shows that there is much more to him than notoriety. In his 40-year career as a writer, Rushdie has published nearly 20 books, many of which won widespread acclaim. In this month’s Bibliography, we look at how Rushdie’s unique approach to stories on migration and mingling cultures shaped an entire generation of literature. We wrap things up with a discussion on Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, which not only won three Booker prizes, but was also awarded the Best of Booker Award in 2008.

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If everyone were eating (farmed) human flesh - would you? That's the question put forth in Agustina Bazterrica's provocative novel Tender is the Flesh, a story that's set in a world in which animals had to be culled because of a mysterious virus, and humans are now the only livestock in the meat industry. We discuss the ways in which this book explores ideas of consumption, propaganda and normalisation, with Bilqis Hijjas. And then in Footnotes, we celebrate George Orwell's Animal Farm, which just hit its 75th anniversary.

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If you remember those Choose Your Own Adventure books from your childhood, you will immediately recognise that exciting feeling of being given a choice within a novel’s story. Intan Paramaditha, however, adapts the concept into a much more adult world that looks at questions of travel, migration, agency, and privilege - which all begin with a woman in Jakarta being given a pair of red shoes by a demon. We speak with Intan about the process behind writing a book like this, and why it so perfectly mirrors the stories she wishes to tell. We wrap things up with a mini-review of the book itself, and the very unique experience of reading it.

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In conjunction with International Friendship Day, we dedicate this episode of By the Book to examining how literature has traditionally handled this relationship. And it turns out that outside of sidekicks, toxic friendships and loners, examples of healthy friendships are hard to come by. Nevertheless, we discuss examples including Anne Shirley and Diana Barry, Asterix and Obelix, and the Losers Club of It. Then in Footnotes, we move on to discussing literary news of the week.

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