Down memory lane with Isa by Errol de Cruz
Malay Mail -- WEDNESDAY, JULY 31, 2013

I just heard that Errol has passed away today. It was such a shock because  had exchanged emails yesterday to meet up on Monday. He was such a dear friend. Below is the last review he did for Silverfish books on Isa Kamari's three Singapore Stories on July 31. We love you Errol.

MULTI-AWARD winning Singaporean author Isa Kamari must be extremely glad that three of his novellas are finding a brand new audience.

Thanks to Silver fish Books, based in Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur, the trio — Duka Tuan Bertakhta, Rawa and Memeluk Gerhana — have been translated into 1819, Rawa and A Song Of The Wind, respectively.

“The three originals were written for Malay readers and he asked for them to be adapted and translated into English for an international readership,” said Silver sh Books director Raman Krishnan who translated two of them himself and one (A Song Of The Wind) with Isa’s wife, Sukmawati Sirat.

The essence of all three are how the island nation’s premier, Lee Kwan Yew, ruled with an iron st and the displacement of Malays from Singapore. In A Song Of The Wind, Ilham is a 21-year-old whose family moves from Kampung Tekad to Kampung Tawakal and eventually a Housing Development Board (HDB) at in Ang Mo Kio.

It is the typical story of how a boy matures into a man, huffing and scu ffing with friends, falling in and out of love. Ilham, on his journey, unfortunately and unwittingly falls in with the wrong crowd and collides dramatically with the realtime history of an emerging independant Singapore.

The sad part is that the lad is blissfully unaware of the political changes and his ‘uneducated’ character is exploited by ruthless people with their own agenda. Author Isa is an engaging storyteller, who spins his tales eloquently and simply, painting vivid pictures with his words, and he proves that you do not have to be a Ludlum, Archer or Brown to keep your reader captivated.

All three novellas speak of the past. In Rawa, the title character relives his past and this includes living in and rowing his pau (rowboat) along the Seletar River and gradually nds he has to move his family to Johor because Singapore will not issue identity cards to the Orang Seletar.

Rawa’s story spans three decades and narrates how he falls in love with a village girl, raises a son, Lamit, is entrusted and loses an emerald ring given to him by the Sultan of Johore.

Rawa is a mystical story of how the character goes in search of his lost ring, crashes his boat and goes missing for two months, during which his wife Temah leaves to look for him and disappears.

The essence of this piece is that life comes full circle when a (not so) mysterious man reappears after Rawa dies and returns the ring to his grandson, Hassan.

1819 is the first of the three, chronologically, and in this, Isa writes about Singapore again, only this time it’s about Sir Stamford Ra es and his relationship with the Muslim saint, Habib Nur, who came there from Penang in the same year.

All said, Isa’s trio of novellas are sad. They tell of loss, the loss suffered by the Malays (orang asli, especially) as they bear the burden of progress and development and how they were ‘sacri ficed’ by Singapore. What do people in the higher echelons of espionage and national security call it all? Collateral damage?

Isa Kamari is a prominent figure in Singapore’s Malay literary scene. He has gained critical acclaim for many of his works, which range from novels and short stories to poetry and essays. He is also a musician and has crafted scripts for television and theatre.

In 1997, his short story Pertemuan won the Hadiah Sastera, Anugerah Persuratan, a Malay literature award given by the Malay Language Council of Singapore.

He received the award for the second time in 2001 for his essay, Milik Siapa Bumi Yang Satu Ini. He has received numerous awards for his other works, including his first novel, Satu Bumi. Released in 1998, Satu Bumi was translated and published in Mandarin and English in 1999 and 2007. It was also selected for the launch of the nationwide reading initiative Read Singapore! in 2005. Another novel, Kiswah, was shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize in 2004.

Isa was presented with the distinguished Southeast Asian Writers Award (also known as the S.E.A. Write Award) in 2006 and has received two of the most prestigious cultural awards in Singapore, the Cultural Medallion in 2007 and the Anugerah Tun Seri Lanang in 2009.

He sits on various government committees, including the steering committee for the Singapore Arts Festival (organised by the National Arts Council), the implementation committee for the National Art Gallery project (under the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts) and the select committee for the promotion of the Malay language (under the Ministry of Education).

He frequently presents papers in international conferences and seminars on literature and the arts and conducts creative workshops for children, regularly.

Song of the Wind -- sample e-book downloads

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)

1819 by Isa Kamari -- (Free e-book downloads)

1819 by Isa Kamari -- (Free e-book downloads)
(Rendered in English from the original Malay by Silverfish Books)

According to the history books, when I was in school a long time ago (and I believe it's pretty much the same still), Thomas Stamford Raffles reported to his bosses in the East India Company that Singapore was an island populated only by the Orang Laut (an indigenous people) who were mainly pirates. However, Isa Kamari's extensive research for this novel suggests otherwise. The author finds that Singapore at the time was settled by small Malay communities from the surrounding area, including different Orang Laut tribes (yes, he considers them Malays) and that they were certainly not pirates. He also learnt of settlements of Chinese, Indians and Arabs on the island, seafarers who had decided to make this their home. He also found that, while not a thriving port like Melaka, Singapore did receive traders from around the world.

But, Isa Kamari's Raffles is not merely a one-dimensional devious colonial monster and political animal (which he undoubtedly was). His is a believable portrait of ruthless cunning, but one with strong social principles, and wracked by tragedy.

“January 19, 1819. A British vessel, the Indiana, set sail from Penang down the coast of the Malay Peninsula, skippered by Captain James Pearl, with a distinguished passenger on board. He was Lieutenant Governor Sir Stamford Raffles. With the midyear south-west monsoons over, and with no fifteen-foot-high waves or incessant rain to deal with, the Indiana continued smoothly on the calm waters of the Straits of Melaka on an important mission for the British East India Company.
On January 27, in mid-journey just after Melaka, the Indiana was joined by eight other ships including the Investigator, skippered by Captain John Crawfurd, and the Enterprise, with the former Commandant and Resident of Melaka, William Farquhar, on board.”

1819. That was the year Stamford Raffles landed at South Point and founded Singapore. It was also the year that the famous Muslim saint Habib Nuh came to Singapore from Penang.  The story unfolds the tense and colourful relationship between the two significant figures in Singapore history between the early and late 1800s. Other characters that shaped the social, economic and political developments of the Malays in Singapore then were Sultan Hussein, Temenggung Abdul Rahman, Wak Cantuk, Munshi Abdullah, William Farquhar and John Crawfurd.

“(Wak Cantuk) was still extremely concerned about the British presence on the island. Wak Cantuk had only twenty students in his silat class, and that would not be sufficient to overthrow the occupiers. He needed at least a hundred.”

Subject:Fiction, Price: RM33.00

To buy: http://www.silverfishbooks.com/buybooks/index.php?main_page=product_book_info&cPath=15&products_id=1860

Free e-book downloads:
Mobi (for Kindle) 
Epub (for Apple and many others)
PDF (for PCs and Macs)

For e-book downloads of Rawa (another one of Isa Kamari's's titles rendered in English) please follow this link: http://silverfishnewbooks.blogspot.com/2013/07/rawa-e-book-downloads.html

Rawa e-book downloads

RAWA by Isa Kamari - free ebook downloads

When Isa Kamari asked if we would publish a translation of his Malay novel we were a little hesitant. First, we have not published a translated work before and, second, we have never published a Singaporean (since our mission has always been Malaysian, Malaysian, Malaysian. We decided to read the manuscript anyway (in Malay). We were stunned. It was world class and, Singaporean or not, we decided to undertake the project. But Isa Kamari had to be happy with our work, too. We sent him sample chapters of the first book, and received a very positive, response. The author offered two more of his novels for us to work on, and we agreed. We applied for funding from the NAC of Singapore, and they liked the project too. The books will be launched officially at the Singapore Writers' Festival in November (more of that later).

Isa Kamari's Malay prose is beautiful, and our work was about rendering the three novels in English, without loosing their flavour, beauty and authenticity. Having grown up in a small town in Johor, our translator connected with the subjects immediately, which made the work, though long and tedious, thoroughly enjoyable.

We are giving away free e-book downloads (in Kindle, Apple and PDF formats) for you to read and decide for yourselves. We think he's world class, and such talent deserves support.

"Rawa is the name of the island and its waters. Rawa is the wind. It is also the name he has lived with for seventy years. He is Rawa, in name and essence.He's now returning to the land, to the waters. He is coming back to the winds after more than thirty years."

RAWA is the story of the Orang Seletar (an indigenous people of Singapore and Johor who lived in boats) that spans three generations from 1950s to 1980s. It is a story of how the Orang Seletar became refugees from their own land in the relentless pursuit of modernisation in Singapore in the sixties, and of how they were assimilated into the Malay community. It is also the story of the socio-political changes in the Singaporean Malay world during that period.

“Again, Rawa can’t help, but smile. Everything has been thought of. Rawa concedes that it is a triumph of the rational, albeit an artificial attempt at improving the bond between man and man, and man and nature. Hassan’s is a lucky generation. Still, he worries about nature being trampled upon and destroyed, and of man being suspicious of man in the relentless pursuit of all things material, with no regard at all for the essence.”

Subject:Fiction, Price: RM33.00

To buy: Silverfish online bookstore

Free sample e-book downloads:
Mobi (for Kindle) 
Epub (for Apple and many others)
PDF (for PCs and Macs)

A world class writer from Singapore

Isa Kamari is the first author from Singapore that Silverfish is publishing. We have an agreement to publish three of his books -- 1819, RAWA, and A Song of the Wind. To date we have only received the second and third titles from the printers, but we have already uploaded them on our online store. They are currently available at Silverfish Books in Bangsar Baru only. They will be going out to the other stores (in KL and Singapore) soon. This is also the first time we are publishing books translated from Malay.

Why are we doing it? First, we read his Malay version and thought he's a world-class writer. Second, we want to expand our horizons to ASEAN. Third, Singapore NAC is supporting the project. (In that order.)

A Song of the Wind
by
Isa Kamari

"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 Kampung 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.

Rawa
by
Isa Kamari

"Rawa is the name of the island and its waters. Rawa is the wind. It is also the name he has lived with for seventy years. He is Rawa, in name and essence.

He's now returning to the land, to the waters. He is coming back to the winds after more than thirty years."

RAWA is the story of the Orang Seletar (an indigenous people of Singapore who lived in boats) that spans three generations from 1950s to 1980s. It is a story of how the Orang Seletar became refugees from their own land in the relentless pursuit of modernisation in Singapore in the sixties, and of how they were assimilated into the Malay community. It is also the story of the socio-political changes in the Singaporean Malay world during that period.