Pakdokter felt very proud to see this book prominently displayed on the shelf where the recently and newly released books were put up at the Edinburgh Book Festival. At least we do have one Malaysian writer whose work was being promoted at the Book Festival.
Tash Aw is a Malaysian who studied law but has now gone into full-time writing. He now lives in London. His first novel, The Harmony Silk Factory, won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Novel and the Costa First Novel Award. Pakdokter had read and commented on this book some time last year.
Pakdokter had actually bought this book in KL and brought it along to read during the holidays in Scotland. And as pakdokter had mentioned in the last blog, books are cheaper in Malaysia than in the United Kingdom....
'The Map of the Invisible World' is the story of two abandoned orphans, Adam, and his brother, Johan, who was adopted by a wealthy Malaysian couple and taken back to Malaysia whereas Adam, who remained behind, was later adopted by a Dutch gentleman, Karl, and raised on a remote Indonesian island, but who was unfortunately arrested and taken away by soldiers during Sukarno's drive to purge Indonesia of its colonial's past. In his quest to locate and find Karl, he travelled to Jakarta and came into contact and became involved with the student's (communist) movement as well as the foreign diplomatic and intelligence operatives in the back ground of the political turmoil of the day..
The book gave an interesting historical perspective of the Indonesian view of Malaysia against which Sukarno launched its Konfrontasi campaign.
The story is beautifully written and easy to read. In fact pakdokter feels that this book is better than his first novel, The Harmony Silk Factory.
The Ministry of Education should make this book a recommended, if not compulsory, reading for schools in Malaysia. There are not many books written by Malaysian writers that have made it to the international scene. We should be proud of this achievement.
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