In Preeta Samarasan’s new novel, Tale of the Dreamer’s Son, the caretaker of a commune in Malaysia’s Cameron Highlands states that “some nations were sending people to outer space while our countrymen were busy butchering each other.” Mrs Arasu, the caretaker in question, was referring to the 1969 race riots in Malaysia, namely the May 13 Incident in which hundreds were killed, the majority of them ethnic Chinese. It’s this date that not only sets the tone for Samarasan’s novel, but also the 2010 award-winning Chinese-language The Age of Goodbyes by another Malaysian writer, Li Zi Shu, recently translated into English by YZ Chin, herself an author of some renown.
That two books so different could be sparked by the same convulsive incident is evidence, if any is needed, of the diversity of Malaysian literature. Tale of the Dreamer’s Son is a more or less traditional (albeit long at about 500 pages) multi-generational family saga written in English by a Malaysian of South Asian descent, while The Age of Goodbyes is an experiment in literary form originally written in Chinese.
Tale of the Dreamer’s Son centers around a man named Cyril Dragon who comes from a long line of Anglo-Indians and is a descendant of Sir Francis Drake.
Francis himself was known to the Spanish as El Draque, or The Dragon … The bastard son who sired our line, James, could not call himself Drake so he took the nickname and wore it proudly—and why not? Dragons are fiery and proud and not to be trifled with whereas a Drake is nothing but a male duck.
Cyril forms a commune at the old tea planter’s home following the May 13, 1969 riots. He believes that all religions are equal and their similarities are greater than their differences. His dozen or so followers of different backgrounds all want an escape from the country’s turmoil. Cyril calls his commune the Muhibbah Centre for World Peace, muhibbah the Malay word for friendship, tolerance, and understanding. The children who live at the Centre, most of whom were born around the time of the 1969 riots, often hear derogatory comments when they go into town.
“Are you from that madhouse all the way up the hill?” “Is it true you all share everything? Husbands and wives also?” “Is it true in your new religion you all sit in a circle and smoke ganja together?”
Things change when a Malay woman, a journalist named Salmah, arrives with her young son Reza in the mid-1970s. She both drinks and smokes and fraternized with men from Canada and Australia. Reza’s rather was one of the latter; after he left Malaysia to return home, she felt lost. The Centre’s tolerant environment fades when Cyril shows favoritism towards her and her son Reza. The resulting child is Clarence Kannan Cheng-Ho Muhammad Yusuf Dragon, the dreamer’s son and the narrator of the story, which alternates in time between the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, and into the future in 2023 and 2024. He goes by Kannan for the first decade of his life until Mahathir’s nationalist crackdown in 1987 and then is known as Yusuf, just one indication that no matter how much Cyril tries to keep his family and followers safe, he and they cannot escape Malaysia’s political turmoil.
The story of The Age of Goodbyes on the other hand begins on page 513. Li Zi Shu addresses this structure early on in her book:
This is so odd that it attracts your attention. A book that starts from page 513. You can’t help but squat down and start reading.
It’s not just the atypical page numbering that makes this book unusual. It is also composed of three concurrent stories that Li separates into chapter headings numbered 1 to 3. The main story is set just after May 13, 1969, which explains the page number 513. In an early part in which the narrator looks back to that turbulent political time in 1969, Li writes:
Years ago, during the nation’s general elections, the National Front coalition that had always dominated Malaysian politics lost its two-thirds parliament seat advantage. On May Thirteenth, the opposition alliance held celebratory parades in major cities, which led to unexpected riots, arson, and bloodshed. The government announced a state of emergency and implemented nationwide curfews for four days. You remember the number 513 used to be taboo. Even many years after the incident, people habitually lowered their voices when bringing up the sequence of digits.
This storyline is in a mining town where a woman named Du Li An meets and marries a gangster called Steely Bo, nicknamed so because of his triad tattooed “arms of steel”. Du Li An runs a kopitiam or coffeeshop called Ping Le House while her husband gambles his days away. When this first thread ends and the second one begins, it centers around an author named Du Li An who has written a book called The Age of Goodbyes. And in the third storyline the reader is suddenly placed into the novel. This one paragraph about sums up the structure, plot and complexity of the book.
Another Du Li An appears … From a quick scan, you grasp that the writer’s intention is to prop up this particular Du Li An as the author of The Age of Goodbyes. This confuses you. The feeling that arises is akin to wandering down a winding hallway and opening all its doors, none of which look like the others. And in the end you find yourself back where you started, or at least it’s a place that greatly resembles where you started.
Confusion aside, the tone and setting of the first storyline carries the book.
The kopitiam opened on a busy street, which, let’s put it this way: The two rows of shophouses there had all kinds of businesses cornered and lacked only a place for people to have a cup of tea while they rested their tired feet, or somewhere for folks working nearby to get their meals. Du Li An had picked a corner lot and demolished one wall. This, combined with a few iron shutters and some bamboo curtains, opened up the space and maximized convenience.
Form is very much function in The Age of Goodbyes. Not only is the novel’s structure unconventional, but the author makes direct reference to it: the structure is not just the means to an end but to some extent is the end. This tendency to employ non-traditional forms or surrealism (and sometimes both) seems surprisingly prevalent in Chinese-language literature from outside China proper—Ho Sok Fong and Ng Kim Chew from Malaysia and Hong Kong’s Dorothy Tse, Hon Lai-Chu and Dung Kai-Cheung come to mind—at least in the relatively few such works that make it into English translation. YZ Chin can have had no easy task rendering this complicated novel into English, one with many moving parts that flow together, yet can stand apart.
These two authors of different backgrounds bring light to a time a half-century ago and through their novels keep alive the memories of May 13, 1969.