If you have downloaded the sample e-books for 1819 and Rawa, you may want to download these as well.Isa Kamari is the first author from Singapore that Silverfish is publishing, having insisted on only Malaysian authors earlier. Why are we doing it? Well we want to expand our horizons to ASEAN, and Singapore appeared to be a natural first stop. Song of the Wind (the Malay title is Memeluk Gerhana, which is quite different) was the first title I read by Isa Kamari. I was impressed not just because our experiences were quite similar. (I am from Johor.)
We have an agreement to publish three of his books -- 1819, RAWA, and A Song of the Wind. We have received all three titles from our printers, and have already uploaded them onto our on-line store. They are currently available at Silverfish Books in Bangsar Baru and at all major bookshops in the city (and we hope country). They have already gone out to Singapore, too. This is also the first time we are publishing books translated from Malay.
We think he's a world-class writer. Read the sample e-books and let's see what you think.
“I recall the day our family moved to Kampung Tawakal in 1967. We were living in a room with my aunt in Kampung Tekad, an adjacent village, before that. We had become a family of six by then – Father, Mother, two younger sisters and a brother – and we needed more room. At seven, I was the oldest child. Father worked as a typewriter mechanic at the British camp on Alexandra Road and mother was a housewife.”
A SONG of the WIND – which spans from 1960s till 1990s, tells the story of a twenty-one-year-old Singapore Malay remembering his childhood and his teenage years in Kampong Tawakal, before his family moved into a Housing Development Board (HDB) flat in Ang Mo Kio. It is the story about him falling in and out of love, studying at the Raffles Institution, confronting the stirrings of manhood, discovered the meaning of friendship, and treading a precarious religious path. His journey, too, collides somewhat dramatically with the real-time history of an emerging independent Singapore nation.
“My brothers in Islam. Ustaz Saniff has explained the importance of working together as a group. Ustaz has explained the meaning of and reasons for verses in Surah As-Saf, the Battle Array. We will only be strong if we move together. Ustaz Saniff has explained that we have to honour our pledges, and that we have to fight to uphold Islam on this earth as God's vicegerent. A person who does not honour his or her promise is a hypocrite. We are not hypocrites. So to practise what we have promised, tonight we will take an
oath; a declaration of loyalty that we will remain true to our struggle,” Zulkifli declared.
An oath? A declaration? What’s the meaning of all this? I trembled all over, but I dared not ask any questions.”
Sample e-book downloads
Mobi (for Kindle)
Epub (for Apple and many others)
PDF (for PCs and Macs)
