Book Description:
In this rich embroidery of stories set against the landscape of the Malaysian capital, the city of Kuala Lumpur is as much a character as any of the denizens, drifters and dreamers portrayed in the stories. These are portraits of the capital seen through the prism of stories written by an array of new literary voices.
Each writer’s experience of or passage through the city is variegated; at some point in their lives, they have grown up in, stopped over in, moved into, or lost and found themselves in the labyrinthine chaos of the city.
“KL was never prim and rarely proper, and this anthology celebrates our famous juxtapositions with welcome rudeness.” AMIR MUHAMMAD
Here nineteen writers present a sweeping literary portrait of the city as seen through their eyes, and in ways unexpected and mesmerising take on the challenge of capturing the exuberant madness and cultural diversity of the city and its enduring spirit.
JANET TAY is a litigation lawyer by training. She is also working towards a Master’s degree in English Literature at University Malaya. Her story, ‘Callus,’ was highly commended in the 2004 Commonwealth Broadcasting Association Short Story Competition, and has been adapted for the Oxford Bookworms World Stories collection published in 2008. Another story, ‘Transience,’ was published in Off The Edge, a leading arts and culture monthly. She writes for Quill and The Star.
ERIC FORBES is a senior editor with a Malaysian publishing house. He has always been obsessed with the relationship between literature and life, and the role literature plays in society. He has edited many books but never gets tired of the grand adventure of reading. His interviews with authors have been published in Quill, Malaysian Insider and The Star.
