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Tag: malayasian author

Read an exclusive excerpt from The Longing

Posted on by simransingh

In The Longing, memory is not just something you inherit — it’s something you survive.
Spanning three generations of women bound by blood, sacrifice, and silence, this quietly devastating novel traces how familial duty and hidden desires shape a legacy across time. In this excerpt, we’re transported to 1957, where seventeen-year-old Ah Lam’s future is being quietly negotiated—her heart caught between a factory worker’s promise and her family’s pressing need. What begins as a story of matchmakers and marriage quickly unfurls into something deeper: the uneasy tug-of-war between personal longing and generational expectation.

The Longing is a story about three generations of women who find what they need when intergenerational trauma and family memories haunt their lives and ties to others.  

*** 

In 1957, just when Ah Lam turns seventeen, Ah Wong decides it is high time for her to get married. The family’s need for financial profit and reduced costs is growing, as with nine children the struggle is arduous. Although their small shop does nicely—and the girls help further by taking sewing and embroidering orders, while the boys taking turns running the tobacco delivery from one neighbourhood to another—the children have growing appetites, and soon they will need to send the boys to the Dutch school, which will cost twice as much as the Chinese-language school. 

Ah Wong has kept silent about Ah Lam’s secret relationship with the factory worker, for it seemed harmless enough. Everyone who had mentioned it to him, hoping to be the first, said ‘How sweet,’ and ‘Don’t worry, it won’t last.’ 

‘The boy works hard and could do well for himself,’ Ah Bao once said.  

But after learning that Tan Kwee has almost no family inheritance, Ah Wong decides Ah Lam should set her sights higher. There are costs for food, housing, children, and festivities to anticipate. And there’s unpredictable rising costs in the market, always coming out to hit everyone without any warnings. Once a week, Ah Wong delivers rice to a wealthy Chinese family who runs a successful packaging company for the Dutch—rice, flour, and sugar. 

Since Ah Wong has always made his deliveries on time, the owner, Cheng Mui Gek, a widowed businesswoman who can smell money from a mile away, grows fond of him, and often talks to him about their respective children. Her youngest son, Cheng Lei, has just turned twenty-two and spends his days playing Chopin, Brahms, and Beethoven on the piano or arranging roses, gerberas, and chrysanthemums in a vase. 

‘He thinks that’s what he wants to do all his life and nothing else,’ Cheng Mui says, ‘but I know better. That boy of mine needs a wife.’ 

***  

This heartfelt story is one you don’t want to miss.  

Get your copy today.  

 

New Books Releasing in March 2025

Posted on by simransingh

A new month means new books to add to your TBR, and this March, we’re bringing you a lineup that’s impossible to resist. Whether you’re in the mood for intrigue, inspiration, or introspection, there’s something here for every kind of reader. Dive into our list and get ready to discover your next great read!

Here are the books releasing this month: 

 

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Written by Kam Raslan, here is a satirical thriller that offers relationship drama, spying and seduction, and thrilling reunions. The book will keep you hooked throughout and take you on a journey of a man who wants to belong to something, or someone.  

 

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Our author Marga Ortigas brings to you a collection of savagely personal ‘postcards’—or eclectic experiential essays—from a former journalist on the margins of middle age. This book will make you laugh and realize that you’re not alone in the journey of life and getting older.  

 

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Here is a chilling mystery written by Ruben Dass that is also based on true experiences. Exciting, isn’t it? The story follows two forensic investigators who find a body in a horrifying state. This journey leads them to unravel secrets and hunt dark human beings.  

 

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Here’s a playbook by John Aguilar for cultivating your genius, optimizing your body, and living over 100! It will guide anyone and everyone who wants to live their best lives, and look and feel good living it. And who doesn’t want that?  

 

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Here’s a collection of short stories written by Patrick Sagaram. In these stories you will find people we all know. People like ourselves, searching and yearning, often in the wrong places for something meaningful and real or for at least a brief moment, right. 

Tempted to read them all already? Keep an eye on our Instagram page to find out when they release.  

 

 

 

 

Read an exclusive excerpt from Saving the Planet

Posted on by simransingh

Saving the Planet is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the intersections between politics and climate change, as well as for an authentic voice at the frontlines of climate action in the Global South. Read an expert from the chapter Livable Cities below.  

*** 

San Francisco has contributed much to music. Metallica, Santana, and the Grateful Dead are just a few of the bands that are from or were based in the city. In fact, journalist Herb Caen called the city ‘Baghdad by the Bay’ due to its diversity and cultural significance. But when talking about the birdsongs there, a curious observation was made. Since 1969, the songs of the white-crowned sparrows in San Francisco have been recorded for study. Similar to human beings, birds have ‘dialects’—there is a geographical variation in birdsongs, and they evolve over time. How fast or slowly this happens depends on various factors. The frequency of the songs has increased over time, possibly adapting to the city’s increased noise pollution. While dialects in the city’s bushy countryside disappeared, the dialect that developed in the city not only survived but became dominant, replacing the disappearing dialects of the countryside. 

Throughout history, the impact of cities on humans has been clear. We are only now, however, realizing the impact of cities on animals, plants, and the environment. While climate change caused by carbon emissions is a relatively recent phenomenon, air pollution is a problem that predates the Industrial Revolution. Workshops and furnaces produced dirty and unhealthy air. The Greek physician, Hippocrates, advised travelling physicians to look at the cleanliness of a city’s air and water. The use of fire from biomass for cooking, heating, and protection against mosquitoes led to lung diseases, which was recorded by various Roman scholars from over 2,000 years ago, as early as the dawn of the Common Era. At the same time, cases were heard in Roman courts about disputes over air pollution. 

About a thousand years after the birth of Hippocrates, Prophet Muhammad was born in Mecca. At that time, the city was thriving with trade, attracting merchants from across Arabia and the Levant. Mecca was also already a city of pilgrimage, sustained by the Zamzam well. Yet, the infant Prophet was sent to the desert to be cared for by Halimah, a wet nurse. This was an Arab custom at that time to not only allow the young to learn the classical Arab tongue of the Bedouins but also enjoy the cleaner desert air outside the city. 

*** 

Saving the Planet relates author Nik Nazmi’s experiences as NRECC Minister [later redesignated as the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Sustainability (NRES)] and his thoughts on connected issues ranging from water management to climate financing. Get your copy to read his fascinating insights.  

 

Read an exclusive excerpt from The Siege Within

Posted on by simransingh

The Siege Within is the untold story behind the political crime that continues to make world headlines, and why a nation so full of promise has been brought to its knees. Read an exclusive excerpt from the book below. 

*** 

Two elements are critical in a bond swindle.  

The first is securing the right coupon and the YTM rate.  

In mid-April 2009, Jonathan Manifold, the head of risk management at AmBank, emailed the bank’s top management overseeing the planned TIA scheme to say he estimated the fair market YTM for the TIA bond issues at 4.72 per cent, based on the 4.72 per cent yield US Treasuries were fetching at the time, and by assigning a so-called 25 basis points spread. This would have roughly been the rate for any typical bond issue guaranteed by the Malaysian government.  

But the TIA bond was a lot more. It was an elaborate exercise in fraud to siphon money and to use it to create a political slush fund for Najib. The rate Manifold had recommended would have been devastating for Project Tiara.  

This was a huge problem. A higher coupon would be crucially beneficial for the plan to succeed. Never mind that the Malaysian taxpayer would have to pay a high annual rate of interest for the thirty-year bond. The overriding objective was to create conditions that would provide all the latitude for the schemers to structure the deal in ways that would allow them to squeeze money up front.  

Manifold’s all-important email on the recommended rate for the TIA bonds quickly disappeared into the ether. AmBank’s Teng and Chan began arguing that the TIA bond proposal was far from being a typical government-backed bond issue.  

Further, Teng and Chan had personally lined up four foreign parties that had expressed a keen interest in underwriting the bonds. The only notable name in the list was the BNP Paribas chapter based out of Singapore. The other three were:  

  • Thailand-based Adkinson Securities, a listed financial outfit that was later renamed Country Group Securities, and which was controlled by the Taechaubol family; 
  • Little known Shikumen Capital Management Ltd, which was incorporated in the Cayman Islands and had operations in Hong Kong; and 
  • Aktis Capital Singapore, a financial advisory and fund management outfit headed by banker Cheah Teik Seng, who worked in the Malaysian Finance Ministry and was known to be close to Nor Mohamed. 

Now, the second element for the swindle would kick in— the mode of issue for the bonds. Depending on the nature of the bonds issues and arrangers, financial advisors would suggest one of three routes—a Private Placement, a Book Building exercise, or a Bought Deal. A Private Placement by a little-known company known as TIA was likely to face some hurdles. The most obvious track would be Book Building, simply because the bonds would be in keen demand to investors as the papers carried a government guarantee. All AmBank had to do was to underwrite the amount that investors would not have taken up. But there was no money to be made in these two approaches. Low and his team of schemers then decided to cherry-pick elements from all three modes of issue to create a financial structure that would enable them to extract as much as possible from the bond issue upfront.  

Project Tiara would apply a Bought Deal, which is usually utilized for cases involving high-yield papers, where the issuer’s credit standing is weak and a higher coupon is required to attract investors. 

***

This is Malaysian journalist Leslie Lopez’s first book, and it delves into the writer’s own archives of previously unpublished material to go back in time and show exactly how it was possible for a Malaysian prime minister to envisage his treacherous crime, and then to execute the dastardly deed. Get your copy now.