Dipika Mukherjee chats with Elaine Chiew About Writer's Postcards and her travel-writing

Credit: SC Shekar

Bio:

Dr. Dipika Mukherjee’s collection of travel essays, WRITER’S POSTCARDS (Penguin Random House SEA), was published in October 2023. Her work is included in The Best Small Fictions 2019 and appears in World Literature Today, Asia Literary Review, Del Sol Review, and Chicago Quarterly Review, Newsweek, Los Angeles Review of Books, Hemispheres, Orion and more, and she has been translated into French, Portuguese, Bengali and Mandarin Chinese. She is the author of the novels SHAMBALA JUNCTION (Aurora Metro, winner of the Virginia Prize for Fiction) and ODE TO BROKEN THINGS (Repeater Books, longlisted for the Man Asia Literary Prize), and the story collection, RULES OF DESIRE (Fixi). Her latest poetry collection is DIALECT OF DISTANT HARBORS (CavanKerry Press, winner of Quill and Ink Award). 

Her work has been performed and installed at the South Asia Institute and the American Writers Museum in Chicago, and is being developed into a choral composition by Art Choral Canada for live performances in 2024-2025. 

 

She has received grants and fellowships, including an Esteemed Artist Award from the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (USA), Illinois Arts Council Agency (USA), Ragdale Foundation (USA), Faber Foundation (Catalonia), Sacatar (Brazil), Rimbun Dahan (Malaysia), and Gladstone Library (Wales), among others. She has taught in the United States, India, China, Netherlands, Malaysia and Singapore and was Distinguished Professor of Linguistics at Shanghai International Studies University, China; Affiliated Fellow of the International Institute of Asian Studies in Leiden, the Netherlands; and affiliated to the Roberta Buffet Centre for Global Studies at Northwestern University, USA. 

 

She is currently core faculty at StoryStudio Chicago and teaches at the Graham School at University of Chicago.

Credit: Author

 

Book Synopsis:

Part travelogue, part memoir, and part commentary, Writer’s Postcards is a collection of essays that examine imagination and culture through the lens of geography. A flaneuse and person of the world, Dipika Mukherjee takes readers through various encounters from her highly mobile life: the lugubrious literature of Brazil; the linguistic diversity in China and Tibet; and meeting the Dalai Lama while travelling as a lone woman through New Delhi. She examines the political unrest in Myanmar after the brief international reach of Burmese books; weighs in on Chicago’s literary landmarks and famous writers; reminisces on the languid feasting of Diwali celebrations at Port Dickson by the Malaysian-Bengali community; and finds new notions of home, identity, and belonging in the Netherlands-among many others.

Thought-provoking and unabashed in its entirety, this is a collection of essays that goes beyond the personal and communal to examine issues of international concern.

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EC: Welcome to Asian Books Blog, Dipika. What an honour to have you. Thank you for sending Writer’s Postcards. I really enjoyed reading these essays about travel, solitude, spirituality, writing, teaching, food, cultural festivals, family bonds, unsung voices, and so much more. What was the impetus for this project?

 

DM: Thanks for these fabulous questions and such a nuanced reading of my book! My impetus would be the gendered landscape of travel writing, even today. I belong to Facebook groups of Women Travel Writers and I personally know a very diverse group of women travel writers; I have written for travel magazines and inflight magazines like Hemispheres and Orion, where women are well represented, but google “BEST TRAVEL BOOKS” and it is the Bill Brysons and Paul Therouxs of our world that pop up.

Tokyo Time, by Dawn Farnham

 T.A. Morton talks to Dawn Farnham about her shift into crime fiction

Though she has now returned to her native Australia, novelist Dawn Farnham is a former expat in Singapore, a place which inspired much of her fiction, including the Straits Quartet, which follows the struggle of two lovers, Charlotte Macleod, sister of Singapore’s Head of Police, and Zhen, triad member and once the lowliest of coolies, who beats the odds to become a wealthy Chinese merchant. Tokyo Time marks Dawn's first foray into the historical crime genre. It is again set in Singapore, against the backdrop of the Japanese Occupation, when the City State adopted a new time zone - Tokyo time.

Publishing in Pakistan

Safinah Danish Elahi talks to Devika Misra about the pitfalls and possibilities of publishing in Pakistan.

English readership in Pakistan is relatively small; none of the big five publishing houses has a significant base in the country. But Pakistani writer and independent publishing house owner Safinah Danish Elahi argues that English fiction by Pakistani writers deserves more attention. She contends that readership patterns are slowly evolving. Although Pakistani fiction publishing is still very much in its infancy, she believes that the role of independent publishers is more crucial than ever before. She spoke to Devika Misra on the occasion of the launch of her most recent novel, The Idle Stance of the Tippler Pigeon.

The Plot Twist

Singapore Writers Festival (SWF) is currently underway - it runs at various venues until November 26.  To suit our strange times, this year’s theme is plot twist - embracing strange approaches, unexpected outcomes, sudden changes in direction, unlikely connections, and the unpredictable. Devika Misra reports.

The opening of SWF saw panellists debate the proposition: This House Believes AI is the Better Writer. Is AI an opportunity or a threat to literature? Can it make good writers better? These were questions addressed by panellists Colin Goh, the Singaporean writer, and creator of the Dim Sum Warriors comics; Arianna Pozzuoli, the Canadian-Singaporean poet and storyteller; Nessa Anwar, playwright and journalist; Marc Nair, Singaporean poet; Melizarani T Selva, Malaysian writer and poet. 

Dear Chrysanthemums: A Novel in Stories by Fiona Sze-Lorrain

 Devika Misra reports.

Singaporean-born, Paris-based Fiona Sze-Lorrain is a poet, translator, musician, and now novelist. Her debut work of fiction Dear Chrysanthemums can be read as a novel or as separate interconnected short stories. Set in Shanghai, Beijing, Singapore, Paris, and New York, the protagonists are all victims of difficult circumstances; young Asian women, alone, vulnerable and struggling to survive displacement and sometimes violence and assault. Despite suffering lifelong mental anguish, they prove emotionally resilient and are keen to connect with the wider world as they construct different personas in challenging and ever-changing landscapes. 

The Siege of Tsingtau: The German-Japanese War 1914 by Charles Stephenson.

World War I in the Far East was a sideshow in the grand scheme of things, but it had long-reaching implications, setting up further conflict in the region. Nevertheless, the main action, the Battle of Tsingtau, was full of drama, bravery, and suffering, which is covered in the book – The Siege of Tsingtau: The German-Japanese War 1914 by Charles Stephenson.

Fantabulous Nonya cookbook author Sharon Wee dishes on the new edition of Growing Up In A Nonya Kitchen

Courtesy of Author

About the Author:

Sharon Wee was born and raised in Singapore, graduating from the National University of Singapore. She worked for Mars Confectionery in Hong Kong and China in the 1990s. She has an MBA from New York University and resides in Manhattan where she trained at the French Culinary Institute. Her recipes have been featured in the New York Times and the Washington Post and she has given interviews about her Peranakan heritage. She chronicles her food experiences on Instagram @nonya.global. Sharon frequently returns to Singapore. 

Courtesy of Author

Synopsis:

This is a cookbook, and an intimate memoir, giving readers a sense of what it felt like to grow up in a Peranakan Chinese family ― descendants of local womenfolk and the earliest Chinese settlers to Southeast Asia.

As a fifth-generation Nonya (honorific for female Peranakans) from both sides of her family, Sharon Wee recollects her life in Singapore. She interviewed older relatives and recreated her mother’s personalized recipes, many orally passed down for generations.

Growing Up in a Nonya Kitchen was originally published in 2012. This updated edition includes revised recipes and cooking methods, with more detailed explanations and guidance for the young or unfamiliar cook to Peranakan food, spiced with a dose of humour. It also includes new contributions by subject experts on the heritage and beautiful cultural legacy of the Peranakans.

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EC: Welcome to Asian Books Blog, Sharon. What an honour to have you. Thank you for sending me your wonderful cookbook, Growing Up In A Nonya Kitchen; it’s refreshingly novel that you’ve embedded a memoir plus cultural commentary on the world of the Peranakans that expand beyond cuisine. Why did you choose this blended approach?  

SW: When I considered publishing my book in the early 2000s, I was cognisant of the fact that there had already been a few established Peranakan cookbooks. Yet, very little was told about the significance of the food and how we ate – the moments we shared, the celebrations, the customs. 

I wove the memoir in to give readers a sense of our culture, and I revolved it around my mother’s life because she was from a vanishing generation of women whose lives focused on raising a family, keeping a home, all while being compromised in their education. Cooking was their currency. I’d like to think that this format of a cookbook memoir with headers elaborating on the dish, was not as common as what you see these days. 

Vampire Hunter D by Hideyuki Kikuchi - a Gothic Horror Sci-fi Fantasy

 

In the distant future, humanity clusters in small villages, reduced to a medieval style of living, while monsters, demons, and vampires roam the outskirts of civilization. It’s a hard life, full of danger, witchcraft, and death – this is the world of Vampire Hunter D.

No Funeral for Nazia, interview with Taha Kehar

 No Funeral for Nazia is Pakistani journalist and writer Taha Kehar’s third and latest work of fiction. The story highlights some of the complexity in his hometown Karachi.

He speaks to Devika Misra.

TK: There are two different Pakistans, You have the Pakistan of the elite and then you have the Pakistan that is fairly steeped in middle class values.”

The Plot Twists In Singapore

Southeast Asia’s largest literary extravaganza, The Singapore Writers Festival, will be held next month. Now in its 26th edition, this year’s theme is “Plot Twist”. 

Devika Misra spoke to Festival Director Pooja Nansi about what audiences can expect at the upcoming event.

Pulitzer finalist Vauhini Vara launches her short story collection This is Salvaged.

Courtesy of W.W. Norton and Author

Synopsis

This is Salvaged (W.W. Norton & Company, 2023).

 

A young girl reads the encyclopedia to her elderly neighbor who is descending into dementia. A pair of teenagers seek intimacy as phone-sex operators. A competitive sibling tries to rise above the drunken mess of her own life to become a loving aunt. One sister consumes the ashes of another. And , in the title story, an experimental artist takes on his most ambitious project yet: constructing a life-size ark according to the Bible’s specifications. In a world defined by estrangement, where is communion to be found? The characters in This is Salvaged, unmoored in turbulence, are searching fervently for meaning, through one another. 

 

Author bio.

 

Vauhini Vara has been a reporter and editor for the Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and the New York Times Magazine, and is the prize-winning author of The Immortal King Rao. She lives in Fort Collins, Colorado. 

Courtesy of Author

Award-winning writer Saras Manickam dishes about authorial ego, complicated women and race discrimination in Malaysia in My Mother Pattu

 

Courtesy of Author

About the Book

My Mother Pattu (Penguin SEA, 2023).

 

Deeply humane, in turn wry and humorous, the stories in this collection haunt readers with their searing honesty. Authentic and unsentimental, each story celebrates the resilience of the human spirit even as it challenges comfortable conventions about identity, love, family, community, and race relations.

Saras Manickam, courtesy of Sharon Bakar

About the Author

Saras Manickam won the regional prize for Asia in the 2019 Commonwealth Short Story Contest. In 2021, her story was included in the Bloomsbury anthology, The Art and Craft of Asian Stories. 

 

Having worked as a teacher, teacher-trainer, copywriter, and writer, Saras Manickam’s various work experiences enabled insights into characters, and life experiences, shaping the authenticity which mark her stories. 

 

My Mother Pattu is her debut collection of stories. She lives and works in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

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EC: Congratulations on your brilliant short story collection, My Mother Pattu. I’m delighted to see the love it’s been getting. I’ve not enjoyed a short story collection this much in a while. I’m curious: many of the stories are set in Mambang (which also means haunting/spirit). Is your Mambang a fictional town or based on a real town (e.g. Mambang di Awan, Perak)? 

 

SM:  Thank you, Elaine, for your very kind words. It’s rather affirming that My Mother Pattu resonates with readers.

 

Mambang is not a real town. It’s fictional, and therefore gives me the freedom to craft the streets, houses, places in it. It frees you up, you know what I mean?

 

The Great Reclamation by Rachel Heng

Devika Misra reports on a conversation between Rachel Heng, and some of her readers. 

Rachel Heng was born and raised in Singapore. She writes both fiction and non-fiction, and her debut novel, Suicide Club (Henry Holt / Sceptre, 2018), was much praised. She is currently an Assistant Professor of English at Wesleyan University, Connecticut, USA. The Great Reclamation, her acclaimed new novel, explores Singapore’s rapid transformation from third to first world in just two generations. At its heart the story is one of unrequited love - a doomed childhood romance and a lost way of life, as both the novel’s protagonist Ah Boon, and his nation, come of age.

Once Our Lives, by Qin Sun Stubis

Qin Sun Stubis speaks to Devika Misra about the power of literature and story- telling.

Born in a Shanghai shantytown and brought up during the turbulence of the Cultural Revolution, Qin Sun Stubis is a Chinese American writer based in Bethesda, Maryland, USA. She has worked as an international communications specialist providing translations and  contributions to Gallup, the Wall Street Journal, and the Getty Center. She is currently a columnist for the Los Angeles based Santa Monica Star.  She also writes poems, short stories, essays and Chinese folk narratives.

Her debut historical memoir, Once Our Lives, explores the deep trauma that tumultuous events in Chinese history inflicted on four generations of the Sun family. From the Second Sino Japanese War in 1937 to an era well past the brutally repressive Cultural Revolution in 1966, the writer’s parents found themselves impoverished and in a constant struggle for survival. Qin was their second daughter; one of four girls. 

The Peking Express by James M. Zimmerman

In 1923, the Blue Express, a luxury train also known as the Peking Express, departed from Shanghai, chugging northward to Peking. On the night of May 5^th, near the town of Lincheng, a gang of Chinese bandits derailed the Peking Express and took the passengers hostage, leading to a standoff that captured the world’s attention.

Tan Twan Eng discusses The House of Doors

Malaysian author Tan Twan Eng’s latest novel The House of Doors has just been included on the longlist for the Booker Prize. Devika Misra recently attended An Evening with Tan Twan Eng in Singapore and here paraphrases some of the conversation.

The House of Doors is a multi layered yet very readable work of historical fiction. The narrative explores Tan Twan Eng's  characteristic themes of love, loss, longing and betrayal, and is set in colonial Malaya, as are his previous works, The Gift of Rain (2007), and The Garden of Evening Mists ( 2012). But this time Tan Twan Eng has taken the arguably audacious step of fictionalizing legendary writer Somerset Maugham. Maugham had in fact himself fictionalized the tale of crime and scandal that is narrated to him by the female protagonist in The House of Doors. She is part of the expatriate community in Penang; he portrays her, and her community, with subtle criticism and nuanced sympathy. 

Tan Twan Eng was inevitably asked: what was the genesis of The House of Doors?

TTE : "Well, actually there are two origins for this novel. One of them is Somerset Maugham and the other one is Dr. Sun Yat- Sen…I first read Somerset Maugham's short story The Letter when I was in my teens. I loved it very much. I found it very gripping and exciting. I was even more intrigued when I found out that he had based The Letter on an actual murder trial, which had taken  place in Kuala Lumpur in 1910. The murder trial of Ethel Proudlock, who was accused of murdering a man she claimed had tried to rape her. The only problem with her justification of killing him was that she shot him five times, … six times, and four in the back as he was running away. So there was all this scandal about Ethel Proudlock. I felt that this would make a very interesting novel about how Somerset Maugham came to write and hear about this one. That's how it started. So I had Somerset Maugham, except I didn't know what to do with him, because obviously the story isn't substantial enough for a full-length novel."

Food glorious food – a feast of stories from Read Paper Republic

Nicky Harman writes: Paper Republic is a registered charity/non-profit website dedicated to promoting enjoyment and understanding of Chinese literature in translation. I am one of its volunteer workers and trustees. As part of our mission, we publish Read Paper Republic, occasional series of complete, free-to-read short stories (or poems or essays) translated from Chinese to English. 

This year, after our foray into Covid stories, entitled Epidemic, which explored how some of China’s best writers have been personally affected by the COVID-19 outbreak, we decided on a more upbeat theme. The current series, entitled Food Glorious Food, is made up of six contemporary pieces all based on or around one of China’s favourite pastimes: eating. 

In Food Glorious Good, we have featured well-known authors from the Chinese-speaking world, including Xu Xiaobin, Hong Ying, Wu Ang, Sabrina Huang, Yang Shuangzi, and Zheng Zhi, all translated by up-and-coming literary translators. The stories range from historical fiction exploring complex relationships and social inequality to a clever, unnerving tale of kidnap at the hands of a food delivery driver. And it is this last story which we have chosen as a splendid climax to our series. The story is called ‘Winter is Coming’ and the author is Wu Ang. 

Bugis Nights by, Chris Stowers

 Devika Misra and Chris Stowers discuss his debut travel narrative, Bugis Nights. 

It’s taken Taiwan based writer and photo journalist Chris Stowers nearly 35 years to publish his debut travel narrative Bugis Nights. This light but exciting read is part memoir and part fantasy. Stowers chronicles his journey on both land and sea as a young backpacker across Asia in the late nineteen eighties. Basing much of his story on diaries and photographs, Stowers harks back to a time when travel, he says, was “simpler, easier slower”…essentially more fun!. But Stowers’ story is about far more than the trials and triumphs of a young naive explorer. It is an endearing and perceptive observation of human behaviour in tough circumstances. With quiet humour, Stowers illustrates the courage, optimism and openness of the itinerant backpacker.

Eternal Summer of the Homeland: Agnes Chew talks about writing a story collection and being the Asia Winner of the CSSP

Courtesy of Author

Book Synopsis

The stories in Agnes Chew’s first fiction collection illuminate the complexity of choice when duty and desire collide, and what a person is willing to sacrifice. A daughter grapples with an unexpected discovery in the aftermath of her mother’s death. A husband struggles to understand his wife’s reaction to her pregnancy. An adolescent and a domestic worker exchange secrets whose weight they find they cannot bear. And in a corner of Changi Airport, a nondescript office cubicle, a patch of open forest, others strive to find meaning and home.

Courtesy of Author

Author Bio:

Agnes Chew is the author of Eternal Summer of My Homeland (2023) and The Desire For Elsewhere (2016). Her work has appeared in Granta, Necessary Fiction and Litbreak Magazine, among others, and her story, ‘Oceans Away from my Homeland’, won the 2023 Commonwealth Short Story Prize (Asia Region). She holds a Master’s degree in international development from LSE; her prize-winning dissertation, which examines inequality and societal well-being in Singapore, was featured in Singapore Policy Journal. Born and raised in Singapore, she is currently based in Germany. 

 

 

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EC: Agnes, welcome to Asian Books Blog, and congratulations on being the Asia Winner for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize as well as the publication of Eternal Summer of My Homeland. Let’s start with this: what draws you to the short story? 

 

AC: Thank you so much, Elaine, for your kind words and for this opportunity! I actually started out writing creative nonfiction, and when I ventured into the realm of fiction writing, the short story form felt like a natural (and conceivable) choice. The more short stories I wrote, the more I found myself drawn to the form. I appreciate its requisite focus on purity and intensity—the way it compels you to distil meaning within a compact space. It’s also a thrill to be able to write a short story within a feverish span of hours or days, especially when I compare it to the far longer process of writing a novel, which I’m now working on.

 

Play the Red Queen - A Vietnam War Crime Thriller

Saigon 1963 – multiple American military advisers and South Vietnamese Army officers are gunned down by the mysterious Red Queen, a deadly Vietnamese assassin. Two MP detectives, Ellsworth Miser and Clovis Robeson, are called in to investigate but find themselves stumbling into a mystery that's much deeper with international implications.