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,...
REHMAN RASHID (1955–2017). "The stories go on forever; they'd outlast eternity if they could." It was with great sadness that we heard this morning of the death of our friend, Rehman Rashid. He suffered a major heart attack while out cycling in January, and never recovered....
The wheel of time turns and we welcome the new month by looking back at the bestsellers' list for April. It contains both familiar titles but also newcomers. Top of the pops is the brilliant memoir by our good friend, the late Benedict Anderson, A...
It’s been a great privilege and pleasure over the past year and more to help produce a really wonderful – and unique – publication. The subject matter is close to our heart: the glove puppet theatre of East and Southeast Asia – known as potehi...
The ebb and flow of what our customers buy is always fascinating, and there are two outstanding patterns: books about Penang and visual books, sometimes in tandem. But top of the pile, thanks to the book launch at Penang Institute, is the lively collection of...
It's already the first day of the new month – with the time seemingly passing in a blur – and an opportune moment to look back at what moved off our shelves last month. Thanks to the Penang launch, Punk, Penentangan dan Politik Transnasionalisme [Punk,...
JANUARY BESTSELLERS. It's time to reveal the hot picks for the first month of the new year. One clear theme is the longevity of some of our customers' favourite books. For the second month running the latest book from Zunar, Wasabi (Wa Sapu Billion) came...
NOVEMBER BESTSELLERS. It's no surprise that last month's bestsellers' list is dominated by writers who appeared at the recently concluded George Town Literary Festival – widely regarded as the best edition so far. One oddity, especially within the book trade, is that four poetry titles...
OCTOBER BESTSELLERS. We're a little late with this, so let's get straight down to business with the bestsellers for October. As always there's a mixture of the new and the familiar. It's surely interesting that the top three titles all engage with the historical and...
Shadow play – known as wayang kulit in the Nusantara and acknowledged in the West as an early form of cinema – comes to life only when there is light. But its anomaly lies in the fact that it is only ‘alive’ by obscuring the...