500 words from Jo Furniss

500 words from is an occasional series in which novelists talk about their new novels. Jo Furniss has recently brought out The Trailing Spouse.

After spending a decade as a broadcast journalist for the BBC, Jo became a freelance writer and serial expatriate. Originally from the United Kingdom, she spent seven years in Singapore and also lived in Switzerland and Cameroon. Jo’s debut novel, All the Little Children, was an Amazon Charts bestseller.

The Trailing Spouse is a novel of marriage, betrayal, and murder set in Singapore. Amanda Bonham moved halfway around the world to be with the man she loves. Although expat life in Singapore can be difficult, Edward Bonham is a dream husband and a doting father to his teenage daughter, Josie. But when their maid dies in an apparent suicide, Amanda can’t help but wonder if her perfect husband has a fatal flaw. And if he can’t resist temptation under their own roof, what does he get up to when he travels? Camille Kemble also has questions for Edward. Recently returned to Singapore, Camille is determined to resolve a family mystery. Amid a jumble of faded childhood memories, she keeps seeing Edward’s handsome face. And she wants to know why. For one woman, the search for answers threatens everything she has. For another, it’s the key to all she lost. Both are determined to find the truth.

So, over to Jo...

Backlist books: The Annotated Malay Archipelago by Alfred Russel Wallace (edited by John van Wyhe)

Backlist books is a column by Lucy Day Werts that focuses on enduring, important works from or about Asia.

This post is about The Annotated Malay Archipelago, a version of the book that 19th-century naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace wrote based on journals from his eight-year journey among the islands of Southeast Asia several years after his return to England. It was originally published in two volumes in 1869, and has never been out of print.

Wallace, a contemporary and correspondent of Charles Darwin, helped develop, or at least accepted early on, Darwin’s theory of natural selection and plotted what is now known as the Wallace Line, which separates the two ecologically distinct zones of Asia and Australia.

Contemporary readers will probably wince at Wallace’s “kill and collect” approach to studying exotic birds and mammals and abhor his characteristically Victorian racist generalisations about the physical and moral characteristics of the Asian people he encountered. Nevertheless, his work is worth reading. Wallace was an intrepid adventurer intent on studying creatures in far-flung lands, and his fascination with the wonders of the natural world continues to inspire joy.

See below to find out what you need to know to decide whether you should read The Annotated Malay Archipelago, or what you should know about it even if you never do!

Indie Spotlight: Matthew Legare

Indie spotlight focusses on self-published authors and self-publishing. Here, Matthew Legare discusses his new novel Shadows of Tokyo, the first in a projected historical thriller-noir series set in pre-World War II Japan. The second book, Smoke Over Tokyo, is coming soon.

Matthew is an indie author publishing under the Black Mist Books imprint. He also reviews new fiction and interviews authors on his blog.

So, over to Matthew…

On translation, by Nicky Harman

Nicky Harman, Yan Ge, Natascha Bruce

Let’s talk literary translation, or how to keep audiences riveted by swearing at them

Last week, I was at Cheltenham Literary Festival, appearing on a panel with Yan Ge and Natascha Bruce. We had carte blanche to talk about Translating China, but decided to focus on Yan Ge’s new novel, The Chilli BeanPaste Clan (Chinese: 《我们家》) because (let’s be honest) it helps sales, and because the three of us all had plenty to say about the book.

The Chilli Bean Paste Clan is set in a fictional town in West China and is the story of the Duan-Xue family, owners of the town’s lucrative chilli bean paste factory, their formidable matriarch, and her badly-behaved, middle-aged son. As the old lady’s eightieth birthday approaches, her children get together to make preparations. Tensions that have simmered for many years come to the surface, family secrets are revealed and long-time sibling rivalries flare up with renewed vigour. 

The Deer and the Cauldron, guest post by John Minford

Between 1997 and 2002, John Minford, now Emeritus Professor of Chinese at the Australian National University, brought out a three-volume translation of the rollicking Chinese martial arts novel, called, in English, The Deer and the Cauldron, with Oxford University Press Hong Kong (OUP HK). Now OUP UK has published it in the UK.  As John explains: "I worked on the translation with David Hawkes, my father-in-law, and, on the last volume, with my late wife Rachel May, for about 10 years from the mid 1990s."

John here writes about the sprawling and beguiling example of Chinese popular culture he and his collaborators worked on for so long.

Oxford University Press Pakistan book fair

The annual month-long Oxford Book Fair, organized by Oxford University Press (OUP), is running until 7 November at Oxford bookshops in cities throughout Pakistan. The much-awaited yearly event always draws a large number of visitors.  The selection of books featured includes both locally published and imported children's books, English Language Teaching material, reference books, and school and higher education textbooks.

For the general reader, there are non-fiction titles on international affairs, politics, history, anthropology, women’s studies, art, and literature.

Biographies and memoirs of prominent Pakistani personalities are being showcased.

Oxford’s hallmark English and bi-lingual dictionaries and thesauruses are available at special, reduced prices.

A Yellow House: Elaine Chiew Talks to Karien van Ditzhuijzen

Credit: Lina Meissen Photography

After a childhood of moving around Asia, the Middle East and Europe, Karien van Ditzhuijzen moved to Singapore in 2012. Karien has a degree in chemical engineering, but gave up her career developing ice cream recipes to become a writer. She now dedicates her life (in no particular order) to advocating migrant workers’ rights, her family, her pet chicken and being entertained by monkeys while writing at the patio of her jungle house.

As a freelance writer and blogger Karien contributes to several publications in Singapore and the Netherlands. In 2012 she published a children’s book in Dutch recounting her childhood in Borneo. Karien van Ditzhuijzen’s debut novel A Yellow House was published by Monsoon Books in 2018. This poignant coming-of-age story, told in the voice of inquisitive ten-year-old Maya, explores the plight of migrant domestic workers in Singapore and the relationships they form with the families they work for.

Karien has been working with migrant domestic workers since 2012, when she joined HOME, a charity that supports migrant workers in Singapore. In the following years Karien worked closely with domestic worker writers, documenting their stories and sharing them on the blog www.myvoiceathome.org and as editor of the anthology 'Our Homes, Our Stories'.

The strong women Karien met through her charity work were the inspiration for A Yellow House.