Call for Entries: NME2

Matahari Books seeks entries for New Malaysian Essays 2!

Yes, we aim to publish maybe 8 people this time. The cover art has been chosen. Each essay, either in English or Malay, should be between 5,000 to 15,000 words.

Among the stuff I wanna see:

- National Service, written from the POV of someone who just went through it
- Contemporary architecture
- Life in a Malaysian jail or drug rehabilitation centre
- Dating rituals (urban or rural, straight or gay, or maybe all together).
- An essay that can be told mainly through pictures
- A biography of someone you think we should all know about
- A comparative thingamajic between Malaysia and a neighbouring country
- An extended, perhaps investigative, rumination on a single local song, film, painting, poem.

... but I am open to suggestions.

Absolute deadline 31 August 2008. But email me much earlier ( matahari.books at gmail.com ) if you are working on something :-)

The book is due in stores in early 2009. The good news is that some stores have already placed advance orders!

Now in selected MPH stores

Berita baik!

As of yesterday, New Malaysian Essays 1 is now available in selected MPH stores such as MidValley and One Utama. Check it out yawl!

This is my first time dealing directly with the bookstores rather than going through a distributor; I have spent more time in loading bays in the past week than is surely seemly for a bourgeois intellectual – but I kinda like it.

It will NOT be available in: Popular, Times, Borders. I can only stock in those places when I, as publisher, have more titles!

Note to self: Buy one of them loading carts to avoid having to haul up the books, packet by packet.

Chat @ Silverfish

We will be reading and discussing New Malaysian Essays 1 this Saturday from 5:30 – 7 pm at:

Silverfish Books
58-1 Jalan Telawi
Bangsar
Tel: 03 22844837

'We' are Brian Yap, Aminuddin Mahmud, Saharil Hasrin Sanin and myself.

Space is limited to about 30 people, so it'll be cosier than the launch and more conducive to discussion. Plus, there will be teh tarik!

Silverfish has a link about the event but manages to misspell my name too. And I've even edited a book for them before! Sheesh.

The riches of Bangladesh

'fess up.

You've most likely never been to Bangladesh. But mention Bangladesh and your first thoughts will not be complimentary. (The current Malay flick, Dunia Baru The Movie, has a Bangladeshi man who only knows how to say "Sepuluh ringgit, duapuluh ringgit, penuh.")

But in the 48 hours I spent there, I saw many amazing things.

In the ride from the airport, I shared the car with a Malaysian businessman who, like me, was making his first trip to the country. "The people here are so poor," he said.

The next morning I saw a legless man, a beggar, writing something on chalk literally on the road. He would write one line, then shift down, and write another. I asked my guide what he was doing. The answer: "He's writing a poem." Some people gave him money; others just read the poem as it was being slowly written.

I went to a bookstore that sold several pirated (!) books. The woman at the counter said, in a somewhat surreptitious manner, "I have the new Orhan Pamuk, do you want it?"

The Independent newspaper has a front-page (!) report about how an annual book-fair is being excitedly thronged by visitors; the inside page has reports, like this one, on the books being launched.

Tomorrow, 21 Feb, is the anniversary of the martyrdom of five students in 1952 who were protesting for the right to make Bengali (rather than just Urdu) a national language of the country. There will be a huge gathering to commemorate this. It was such a watershed day in the nationalist movement that UNESCO has delcared Feb 21 to be National Mother Language Day.

Farid, a young volunteer with the film festival who was tasked with shepherding us around, had never left the country but quoted Socrates and spoke of Garcia Marquez. And when I asked him to recommend some of his favourite CDs to buy, he brought me to a recording of Tagore poems.

And I thought of the Malaysian businessman who said, "People here are so poor."

And, truth be told, I felt a little sorry for us.

Thank you

... to the more than 200 people who crowded the book launch! I shall be able to upload photos on Wednesday, as tonight I am off to Bangladesh for another film event.

We sold 113 copies of New Malaysian Essays 1 there, 49 copies of Kasut Biru Rubina, and so on ...

A special thanks to Jerome Kugan and Mia Palencia for performing to the standing-room crowd.

It was indeed overwhelming :-)

New Malaysian Essays 1 can now be purchased only at Kinokuniya KLCC (which I am told is displaying it very nicely) and Silverfish in addition to the online store Kinibooks.

NME1 – now on Kinibooks

The postal pre-orders for New Malaysian Essays 1 have ended! (SFX: Whistle blowing). Thanks to everyone who took part.

Now the book is available online only through Kinibooks, that plucky bookstore run by Malaysiakini.

Wait, there's more! You do have to pay for postage, but each order gets a gift! To find out what the gift is, you will have to click on the link lah.

If you choose not to take the gift (maybe because you already have it), just tell 'em at the Contact Us link.

Or: Just turn up at the launch tomorrow night lor ...

My life as a typo

Whenever I buy a new book on contemporary Malaysia, the first thing I do is to flip to the index to determine:

1. If it has an index
2. If I am in it

Both are happily true in the case of this compilation by Ooi Kee Beng, the author of that Tun Ismail biography:


Although I am present and accounted for on page 79, my name is misspelled! And the author has even met me before! I hope a reprint can rectify this egregious slip, which even Pak Lah is bound to notice.

Heh.