Historical Fiction (GR)

From the author of the internationally acclaimed The Harmony Silk Factory comes an enthralling novel that evokes an exotic yet turbulent place and time--1960s Indonesia during President Sukarnos drive to purge the country of its colonial past. A page-turning story, Map of the Invisible World follows the journeys of two...

Set in Malaysia in the 1930s and 40s, with the rumbling of the Second World War in the background and the Japanese about to invade, The Harmony Silk Factory is the story of four people: Johnny, an infamous Chinaman – a salesman, a fraudster, possibly a murderer – whose shop...

A beautiful little novel about books, history, ambition and the importance of literature. Nick Hornby Truly potent ... Adimi confronts us with episodes that are simply never spoken of in France The New York Times Book Review In 1936, a young dreamer named Edmond Charlot opened a modest bookshop in...

The eighth book in the cultural series Asias Lost Legends, this is a Malaysian tale of how a young princess becomes the first Peranakan. When Li Po travels from China to Malaysia to marry the Sultan of Malacca, the people are reluctant to welcome her as their Princess. But Li...

Siew Li leaves her husband and children in Tiong Bahru to fight for freedom in the jungles of Malaya. Decades later, a Malaysian journalist returns to her homeland to uncover the truth of a massacre committed during the Emergency. And in Singapore, Siew Lis niece Stella finds herself accused of...

Behind the golden façade of a land filled with opportunities dwell two destitute souls, shipped to Singapore in the late 1800s. Oseki, an ingenue forced into prostitution as a karayuki, grapples with being betrayed by her own father and transforms into a monster she can’t recognise. Gobind, a deaf convict...

Shortlisted for the Epigram Books Fiction Prize 2021 Blue Sky Mansion tells the tale of Tang Mei Choon, a young girl who was sold into servitude and nearly ends up being entombed alive. She flees with her saviour, a benign gentleman called Chen Tong, to Penang, Malaya, where a new...

Mochtar Lubis, in this vivid dissection of social and political life in Jakarta at the beginning of the 1960s, reveals the dark currents of poverty, corruption and vice which course beneath the surface of one of the great cities of the Third World. Although set in Indonesia, the tale that...

The book describes the experiences of two French planters, depicts various types of Englishmen running plantations in Malaya, and captures the beauty and appeal of the land.