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It’s World Book & Copyright Day! Here’s 5 local books authored by Malaysians that you should read

It is World Book & Copyright Day today! Since we are still in the midst of Movement Control Order, why don’t we spend some time to read books, or buy some books online for your reads. We should also encourage and support our own local writers by buying their original works. Just in case if you doesn’t know, we have quite a number of accomplished writers here in Malaysia. Here’s some of their literary works, and also where you can buy it.

The Principal Girl: Feminist Tales from Asia – Sharifah Aishah Osman and Tutu Dutta

The Principal Girl: Feminist Tales from Asia features stories of bold, bright, and heroic women and girls drawn from Malaysia and Singapore, and the Asian diaspora that underlies the rich and diverse cultural heritage of the two countries. All eighteen stories in this anthology emphasise female empowerment, and privilege the strength and wisdom of young girls and women, over conventionally idealised traits such as beauty, obedience, conformity, and passivity, so frequently depicted in traditional male-centric folk tales.

Of these, eight tales are based on or inspired by Asian folklore and well-known female cultural icons, while ten are original stories with contemporary settings, drawn from sources as diverse as the Mahabharata and Sejarah Melayu, to Iban and Kadazan folklore.

Apart from reimagined tales of legendary female figures like Hang Li Po, Princess of Mount Ledang, Draupadi, Queen Vishpala, Khawlah bt Azwar, Mahsuri, and Cik Siti Wan Kemboja, and mythical creatures like the Phoenix and Gedembai, readers will also meet the crime-fighting teenager Surya, the scholar and philanthropist Lilly Po, and the beauty queen Eve, who learns the true meaning of embodying the spirit of Huminodun, among many others just as dauntless.

Aimed at young adult readers, this volume showcases the writings of both new and established authors from Malaysia and Singapore, and hopes to inspire its young audience with empowering narratives of various ‘principal girls’ of past and present, all courageous, resourceful, and intelligent in their own ways. These are tales readers will want to revisit, again and again.

Buy it from Gerak Budaya

The True Queen (A Sorcerer to the Crown Novel) – Zen Cho

The enchanted island of Janda Baik, in the Malay Archipelago, has long been home to witches. And Muna and her sister Sakti wake on its shores under a curse, which has quite stolen away their memories. Their only hope of salvation lies in distant Britain, where the Sorceress Royal runs a controversial academy for female magicians. But the pair travel via the formidable Fairy Queen’s realm, where Sakti simply disappears.

To save her sister, Muna must learn to navigate Regency London’s high society and trick the English into believing she’s a magical prodigy. But when the Sorceress Royal’s friends become accidentally embroiled in a plot – involving the Fairy Queen’s contentious succession – Muna is drawn right in. She must also find Sakti, break their curse and somehow stay out of trouble. But if Fairyland’s true queen does finally return, trouble may find her first . . .

Get it from Amazon

The Weight Of Our Skies – Hanna Alkaf

A music loving teen with OCD does everything she can to find her way back to her mother during the historic race riots in 1969 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in this heart-pounding literary debut.

Melati Ahmad looks like your typical movie-going, Beatles-obsessed sixteen-year-old. Unlike most other sixteen-year-olds though, Mel also believes that she harbors a djinn inside her, one who threatens her with horrific images of her mother’s death unless she adheres to an elaborate ritual of counting and tapping to keep him satisfied.

But there are things that Melati can’t protect her mother from. On the evening of May 13th, 1969, racial tensions in  her home city of Kuala Lumpur boil over. The Chinese and Malays are at war, and Mel and her mother become separated by a city in flames.

With a 24-hour curfew in place and all lines of communication down, it will take the help of a Chinese boy named Vincent and all of the courage and grit in Melati’s arsenal to overcome the violence on the streets, her own prejudices, and her djinn’s surging power to make it back to the one person she can’t risk losing.

Buy it from MPH

The Garden of Evening Mists – Tan Twan Eng

It’s Malaya, 1949. After studying law at Cambridge and time spent helping to prosecute Japanese war criminals, Yun Ling Teoh, herself the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks solace among the jungle-fringed plantations of Northern Malaya where she grew up as a child. There she discovers Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner and creator, the enigmatic Aritomo, exiled former gardener of the Emperor of Japan.

Despite her hatred of the Japanese, Yun Ling seeks to engage Aritomo to create a garden in Kuala Lumpur, in memory of her sister who died in the camp. Aritomo refuses, but agrees to accept Yun Ling as his apprentice ‘until the monsoon comes’. Then she can design a garden for herself.

As the months pass, Yun Ling finds herself intimately drawn to her sensei and his art while, outside the garden, the threat of murder and kidnapping from the guerrillas of the jungle hinterland increases with each passing day. But the Garden of Evening Mists is also a place of mystery. Who is Aritomo and how did he come to leave Japan? Why is it that Yun Ling’s friend and host, Magnus Praetorius, seems almost immune from the depredations of the Communists? What is the legend of ‘Yamashita’s Gold’ and does it have any basis in fact? And is the real story of how Yun Ling managed to survive the war perhaps the darkest secret of all?

There is also a movie adaptation of the novel that has hit the local cinemas early this year.

This book is available at Kinokuniya

The Sum of Our Follies – Shih-Li Kow

With lakes and mountains in attendance, a local legend is almost prerequisite. Had the forefathers of Lubok Sayong been prescient enough to leave behind some physical evidence to support our legend, even if romanticised with half-truths and superstitions, travel guidebooks today would have listed us in their itineraries. Unfortunately, there are no fields of charred rice or dubious tombs of fallen warriors in Lubok Sayong as in the more tourism savvy island of Langkawi. In our town, we serve up our legend like nasi lemak bungkus – lukewarm and thinly garnished, in portion that fall short of satisfying the appetite and the imagination.

Purchase it at Areca Books

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