History, biography

Brickfields: A Time, A Place, A Memory by Balan Moses (RM 30.00)

Brickfields: A Time, A Place, A Memory, is a first-person account of the childhood and teenage days of Balan Moses, a senior editor with the New Straits Times, in Brickfields.

He narrates the joys and sorrows of growing up between 1955 and 1970 in a middle-to-lower-middle-class neighbourhood with its pecularities, unforgettable personalities and unique ambience. He has tried to trace developments in the area over the period in question in a light, narrative manner.

His sense of humour, evident in the anecdotes and many unique experiences that he has sprinkled throughout the book, has helped bring Brickfields alive. Moses has taken readers by the hand for a stroll through Brickfields and through time so that they too can see and experience what he saw and experienced all those years ago.

This book is intended to provide the younger generation of today a glimpse of the halcyon days spent in a suburban in a newly-independent nation. It is a personal story of how a child grew into a teenager in a quaint area called Brickfields that is almost no more, except in the memories of the people who once called Brickfields home.

Politics/History

The Reluctant Politician by Ooi Kee Beng (RM 68.00)

This is the long-awaited biography of Malaysia's powerful Home Affairs Minister and Deputry Prime Minister Tun Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman, who passed away of a heart attack on 2 August 1973. It is based on his provate papers and on numerous internviews with his relatives and with people who knew him well, including Ghafar Baba, Musa Hitam, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, Robert Kuok, Lee Kwan Yew and Ghazalie Shafie. New perspectives are provided about the struggle for independence, Malaysia's relationship with Singapore, the origins of Southeast Asian regionalism, the internal conflicts of the ruling party UMNO, MCA-UMNO ties, the fatal illness of Tun Abdul Razak Hussein, the May 13 riots, and the New Economic Policy. This book contains not only new facts about Malaysian and Singaporean history, but also insights into the processes of decolonization and nation building.

Politics/Sociology

Other Malays by Joel S. Kahn (RM 85.50)

This new reading of constructions of ethnicity in Malaysia and Singapore is an important contribution to understanding the powerful linkages between ethnicity, religious reforms, identity and nationalism in multi-ethnic Southeast Asia.

The narrative of Malay identity devised by Malay nationals, writers and filmmakers in the late colonial period associated Malayness with the village or kampung, envisaged as static, ethnically homogenous, classless, indigenous, subsistence-oriented, rural, embedded in family and community, and loyal to a royal court. Joel Kahn challenges the kampung version of Malayness, arguing that it ignores the immigration of Malays from outside the peninsula to participate in trade and commercial agriculture, the substantial Malay population in towns and cities, and the reformist Muslims who argued for a common bond in Islam. Owing to a rising dissatisfaction with the established order and new modernist sensitivities, especially among
younger generation, the author argues that it is time to revisit the alternative, more cosmopolitan narrative of Malayness.

Reference

The Encyclopedia of Malaysia,Volume 12: Peoples and Traditions edited by Prof Dato Dr Hood Salleh (RM 95.00) Malaysia is home to scores of ethnic groups. Each community, itself a complex of ethnic sub-groups, is distinguished by its cultural, religious and artistic traditions and customs, which are often centuries old. The resulting ethnic diversity has produced a complex, heterogeneous nation of communities united by shared values, expressed through the acceptance of each other's tradition.

Traditional forms of cultural expression, especially in visual and performing arts, provide evidence of importation and borrowing from South Asia, the Middle and Near East, and the West, while others reflect cross-cultural exchanges and inter-ethnic mergers.

This volume covers all the peoples of Malaysia and their most significant traditions. It commences with a look at the migratory and demographic patterns of the population from ancient times and the genesis of a multiethnic society, and provides insights into the various ethnic groups in Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak, and their distinct cultural and social identities. It discusses their traditional habitat, culture, customs, costumes, languages, cuisines and economic pursuits, and highlights efforts made by the communities to preserve their heritage in the face of modernization and globalization.

This volume also discusses the cultural fusion that underscores the multiculturalism of Malaysia - the result of assimilation, integration and accommodation - and how this has fostered a unique national heritage: a melting pot of ethnicities, cultures and traditions.

Book of the week - Poems

Tankas from a Tsunami by Cecil Rajendra (Hardback, RM 50.00)

Tankas from a Tsunami is a cycle of poems in the aftermath of the horrendous tsunami that struck the Asia-pacific region on 26th December 2004; taking nearly 300,000 lives and leaving a trail of death and devastation that affected millions around the globe.

The tsunami, Rajendra says, brought out the 'best and beast' in men: thecourage / the corruption, the greed / the generosity. The self-sacrifice / the self-promotion, the brave and the braggard, etc. etc.

It spiralled, he adds, into almost a metaphor of the human condition in the new millennium.

For this most taxing themes, Mr Rajendra employs the tanka stanza: the daunting Japanese verse form of 5 lines comprising 31 syllables in a 5-7-5-7-7 arrangement.

Tankas from a Tsunami is Mr Rajendra's 19th collection of poetry.