07 Aug Book Launch: Bernice Chauly: Once We Were There

The Penang launch of Bernice Chauly‘s outstanding debut novel, Once We Were There (Epigram Books).

Journalist Delonix Regia chances upon the cultured and irresistible Omar amidst the upheaval of the Reformasi movement in Kuala Lumpur. As the city roils around them, they find solace in love, marriage, and then parenthood. But when their two-year-old daughter Alba is kidnapped, Del must confront the terrible secret of a city where babies are sold and girls trafficked. By turns heart-breaking and suspenseful, Once We Were There is a debut novel of profound insight. It is Bernice Chauly at her very best.

“An exhilarating fiction with a breathless, breakneck pace, like the new Malaysia it lovingly and bitingly tells on, with corrupt, idealistic, greedy, confused, identifiably Malaysian ordinary-native-citizens-politicians-power-monger-dispossessed-resistant characters to usher in a generational shift in sensibility. A must read for all who track Malaysian literature into the 21st century.” – Shirley Geok-lin Lim

Bernice Chauly will be in conversation with Gareth Richards

Date: Saturday 5 August 2017 at 2.30pm

Venue: Penang Institute, Brown Road, George Town, Penang