The Long Day Wanes: A Malayan Trilogy by Anthony Burgess

Burgess manages to say things about race and class in Malaya that even now, fifty years later, are rarely being said in fiction. Sometimes it takes an outsider to see a place with the clear, cruel eye that makes for successful satire.

“Eating Asia”:http://eatingasia.typepad.com: On the surface, this is a food blog, but the writer and photographer—husband-and-wife team Robyn Eckhardt and Dave Hagerman—use food as a window into Malaysian politics, history, and culture with great subtlety and intelligence.

“Sepuluh Tahun Sebelum Merdeka”:http://www.vimeo.com/344899 (Ten Years Before Independence) (2007, dir. Fahmi Reza): This award-winning half-hour documentary provides an alternative history—one that has been excised from the official account—of the path to Malayan independence.

Preeta Samarasan‘s short story “A Rightful Share” appeared in Guernica’s November 2009 issue. Her first novel, Evening Is the Whole Day (Houghton Mifflin, 2008), was shortlisted for the Commonwealth First Book Award and long listed for the Orange Prize. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous publications, including A Public Space, Five Chapters, Asia Literary Review, and Hyphen. She currently lives with her husband and baby daughter in central France, where she is at work on a second novel.