28 Nov Festive Overtures

The waiting is over, the bookstall is set up (and looking fine) and the writers are in town. And after the welcome from the George Town Literary Festival curator, Umapagan Ampikaipakan, there was a quite brilliant keynote address from Eddin Khoo – invoking the spirits of James Joyce and a Kelantanese shaman and many other voices to show us the power, the beauty, the lucidity of the word. Eddin stepped onto the platform as a last-minute replacement for Rehman Rashid – a kindred spirit – who generously explained his withdrawal from the Festival and offered us the speech (which you can find on his Facebook page) he would have made in a magnanimous gesture. Both these fine writers deserve the complementary accolades for what they’ve written and who they are in our society.