500 Words From...is a series of
guest posts from authors, in which they talk about their newly-published
books. Here, Barbara Ismail talks about Princess Play, the second in her Kain Songket Mysteries, which she intends
to be a 6
or 7 book series. The mysteries feature Malaysia’s first female detective,
Kelantanese Mak Cik Maryam, a no-nonsense kain songket trader in the Kota Bahru
Central Market - kain songket are gorgeously woven silks, patterned with gold
or silver threads, found all over the Malay world.
Barbara Ismail now lives in her home city, New York, but she studied
the wayang siam puppetry tradition in Kelantan in the 1970s, when she was doing
fieldwork for a PhD in anthropology.
So: 500 Words From Barbara Ismail...
The Kain
Songket Mysteries were originally conceived as a
story about Kelantan and its culture. I never thought of myself as a novelist, since
the writing I had done in the past was academic for the most part. However, I wanted to write something easier
to read than a general ethnography, and in the bargain, way more fun to write. Writing fiction allows enormous leeway in the
story and the characters, and of course, reality doesn’t limit what you can do.
Having said that, I think the
background of the novels—Kelantan and its people—are quite realistic, and I
have tried to stick to the Kelantan I know and the culture I love. Of course, murder doesn’t happen in Kelantan
with the regularity of a mystery series, and I fear that as the stories follow
each other I may be decimating the population!
And while the plots are, of course, fiction, the society in which they
are placed is certainly not.
I enjoy reading mystery novels
and therefore thought to write in a genre I liked and could be comfortable
with. Mysteries in general are quite
stylized, with a strong story structure: the question is never what will happen, I think, but rather how. I find, therefore, that within the ritual,
the specific sleuth and environment can be explored at length with a story line
to carry it along.
When writing the stories, I
usually begin with the victim, and try to imagine the full person, filling in
his or her family, friends and work. The
characters take shape, and then basically do what they want: I don’t begin the story with an outline or a
detailed plot: the characters themselves
take over the story, and in both the books I have written, I was surprised at
the end to find out who did it: the
murder seemed to present him or herself without my "permission".
Many of the characters are based,
at least to some extent, upon real people.
Mak Cik Maryam is based upon one of my neighbors in Kota Bahru, who
owned a cloth stall in the main market, and also upon my Polish mother, who
shares her name. The bomoh (spiritual
healer or shaman) in Princess
Play is also based upon a bomoh I knew in
Kelantan. Mak Cik Maryam’s husband Mamat
is based upon a neighbor with whose family I lived in Pengkalan Cepa, and also
owes a great deal to my sister-in-law, who first commented that Mamat was so
nice, it didn’t seem real: in homage to
her, I have worked to make him the ideal husband, perhaps bordering on fantasy. Maryam’s daughters are my daughters; they
provide a great deal of inspiration.
The Kain Songket Mysteries are published by Monsoon, in paperback and ebook, priced in local currencies.
