Thursday 25 June 2009

TAXI TALES update

I am so happy that I published Taxi Tales on a Crooked Bridge. It has shifted 2,000 units and is selling 5 copies in Singapore for every 4 copies here, so I guess this counts as our first 'international book!' (Alas, 'international bestseller' would be more than a mite presumptuous). 

It's the sort of thing that I set up Matahari Books to take on: creative non-fiction that is not composed of microwaved articles from a newspaper column. I am glad that a young Singaporean filmmaker was so inspired by the book that he plans to make a documentary about his own conversations with taxi drivers. If this comes to light, I hope we can share it here.

There have been suggestions to do a Malaysian version, but honestly, how can you write about Malaysian taxis without covering the whole page in unbecoming expletives? More appropriate would be a book on taking the LRT, or even hanging out in different shopping malls. Any takers?

In the meantime, heeeere's Charlene:




13 comments:

Chet said...

Congratulations, Amir!

The LRT collection sounds interesting.

Amir Muhammad said...

Wanna write it? :-)

Chet said...

I think you can call for submissions for such a collection.

I'm only an occasional LRT user.

RuNNi said...

bought the book and lovin it.

Uuuu... yeah i agree,the LRT collection sounds tempting!!

Amir Muhammad said...

It's better if it's written by one person, don't you think? Now to find that person...

Anonymous said...

Congratulations!

murkyparit said...

haha.. I take a taxi to and fro work EVERYDAY thus spending a generous 20minutes per day talking to random taxi drivers.. Its only been a month, but I say... taxis can be your/their confession booth or like speed-dating - both of you end up sharing something about yourselves in less than 10 minutes..

Sometimes you cant stop but be truthful rather than lying to perfect strangers, thinking you wont be seeing them again. Thinking, like them, we are just random strangers they meet in their taxis.

Chet said...

Amir

LRT is more of a mass public transport, so a book with contributions from different LRT users would reflect its mass appeal. Unless, of course, you want to keep to the format of Taxi Tales.

yapthomas said...

Hey Amir,

I read some of the Taxi Tales from my friend who bought it at Urbanscapes. Great one!

Looking into contacting you regarding the LKT I bought over the weekend, but I couldn't find your contact.

Amir Muhammad said...

Taxi Tales completely sold out at Urbanscapes! I should have brought more copies...

My email address is on the copyright page of any Matahari Books publication :-)

karen said...

Hi Amir!

Guess what? Check my blog out:
http://lrtmoments.blogspot.com/
I just started but I had it in my mind for the longest time! I was afraid it would seem crazy...and now fate has let us to each other.

Do contact me if you think I'm worth the while!

iamzade said...

Amir,
I just spoke to a friend who is a taxi driver in KL to do some collections of his story (and his friends') as a taxi driver. Do you not think that it's gonna be appealing? Let me know if we can work together on this...(Amshida Rohayani Ahmad Rani).

Amir Muhammad said...

Email me and we shall see ;-)