List of authors and books in the Writing in Asia Series
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Writing in Asia Series was a series of books of Asian writing published from 1966 to 1996 by Heinemann Educational Books (Asia) Ltd [1] (often referred to as Heinemann Asia), [2] a subsidiary of Heinemann, London. Initiated and mainly edited by Leon Comber, the series brought attention to various Asian Anglophone writers, like Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Western writers based in Asia like Austin Coates and W. Somerset Maugham and modern and classic stories and novels in English translation from the Malay, Indonesian, Thai and more. The series is also credited with contributing prominently to creative writing and the creation of a shared regional identity amongst English-language writers of Southeast Asia. [3] [4] After publishing more than 110 titles, the series folded after Heinemann Asia was taken over by a parent group of publishers and Comber left. [5]
Inspired by the successful and pioneering African Writers Series, Leon Comber, the then Southeast Asian Representative of Heinemann Educational Books Ltd., founded the series as its general editor in 1966 in Singapore. Comber thought a similar series focussing initially on Southeast Asia was worth pursuing to "give a tremendous boost to creative writing in English...which was still regarded then as something of a cultural desert". He also wanted to publish the "tremendous body of local writers writing in their local languages" across the entire Asia in English translation "to make it available to a wider reading public" as he felt that existent publishers only focussed on their individual countries.
Buoyed by the profits made from textbook publishing, the series first published Modern Malaysian Chinese Stories in 1967. The anthology, whose stories were edited and mainly translated into English by Ly Singko with a foreword by Han Suyin, sold moderately, but Ly was to be detained without trial shortly after by the Singapore authorities under the Internal Security Act for supposed "Chinese chauvinism".
The series met with commercial success a decade later when two reprinted Austin Coates books in the series, Myself a Mandarin (1977, c.1968) and City of Broken Promises (1977, c.1960), became bestsellers. The former was also serialised by the BBC, broadcast on Radio Hong Kong and had its film rights sold, while the latter was adapted into a play at the 1978 Hong Kong Festival of Arts. Other commercially successful titles were Tan Kok Seng's autobiography Son of Singapore (1972), which sold over 25,000 copies, and Catherine Lim's short-story collection Little Ironies: Stories of Singapore (1978), which sold 8,000 copies. [6] By 1988, about 15 titles in the series were used as supplementary textbooks in Singapore schools, guaranteeing sales in the thousands. [7] [8]
Significantly, as part of the series, Australian Harry Aveling translated Pramoedya Ananta Toer's novel The Fugitive (Perburuan) (1975, c.1950) and Iwan Simatupang's novel The Pilgrim (Ziarah) (1969) from the Indonesian to English. The Pilgrim is considered the first modern Indonesian novel and won the first ASEAN Literary Award for the novel in 1977. The series also met with critical acclaim when Shirley Geok-lin Lim's debut collection Crossing The Peninsula & Other Stories (1980) won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, a first both for an Asian and for a woman. The series also published the debut titles of pioneering Singapore poets like Edwin Thumboo and Lee Tzu Pheng.
In 1982, however, Charles Cher, the then General Manager of Heinemann Educational Books, confirmed that the series had stopped publishing poetry because of poor sales. [9] [10] In 1985, after publishing more than 70 titles, Comber left the series after Heinemann Asia was taken over by a parent group of publishers. In retrospect, Comber notes that in business terms, Heinemann made "very little" from the series, though it neither lost much, with textbook publishing sales subsidising the series. [11] The series continued until around 1996, resuming publishing poetry and diversifying its focus beyond literary fiction to ghost stories.
Some Writing in Asia series titles have since been republished by other companies, like Lloyd Fernando's novel Scorpion Orchid (1976) by Epigram Books in 2014. [12]
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Catherine Lim Poh Imm is a Singaporean fiction author known for writing about Singapore society and of themes of traditional Chinese culture. Hailed as the "doyenne of Singapore writers", Lim has published nine collections of short stories, five novels, two poetry collections, and numerous political commentaries to date. Her social commentary in 1994, titled The PAP and the people - A Great Affective Divide and published in The Straits Times, criticised the ruling political party's agendas.
Rosalie Matilda Kuanghu Chou was a Chinese-born Eurasian physician and author better known by her pen name Han Suyin. She wrote in English and French on modern China, set her novels in East and Southeast Asia, and published autobiographical memoirs which covered the span of modern China. These writings gained her a reputation as an ardent and articulate supporter of the Chinese Communist Revolution. She lived in Lausanne, Switzerland, for many years until her death.
The literature of Singapore comprises a collection of literary works by Singaporeans. It is written chiefly in the country's four official languages: English, Malay, Standard Mandarin and Tamil.
Cyril Wong is a poet, fiction author and literary critic.
Shirley Geok-lin Lim is an American writer of poetry, fiction, and criticism. She was both the first woman and the first Asian person to be awarded Commonwealth Poetry Prize for her first poetry collection, Crossing The Peninsula, which she published in 1980. In 1997, she received the American Book Award for her memoir, Among the White Moon Faces.
Edwin Nadason Thumboo B.B.M. is a Singaporean poet and academic who is regarded as one of the pioneers of English literature in Singapore.
William Heinemann Ltd., with the imprint Heinemann, was a London publisher founded in 1890 by William Heinemann. Their first published book, 1890's The Bondman, was a huge success in the United Kingdom and launched the company. He was joined in 1893 by Sydney Pawling. Heinemann died in 1920 and Pawling sold the company to Doubleday, having worked with them in the past to publish their works in the United States. Pawling died in 1922 and new management took over. Doubleday sold his interest in 1933.
Daren Shiau, BBM, PBM, is a Singaporean novelist, poet, conservationist, and lawyer in private practice qualified in Singapore, England and Wales. He is an author of five books.
Jacintha Abisheganaden, known professionally as Jacintha, is a Singaporean singer, actress, and theater practitioner who studied at the National University of Singapore and received a degree in arts, majoring in English literature. She is a founding member of the performance company TheatreWorks.
Goh Sin Tub was a well-known pioneer of Singaporean literature. He was a prolific writer of numerous book titles, which includes bestsellers like The Nan-Mei-Su Girls of Emerald Hill, The Ghost Lover of Emerald Hill, and the Ghosts of Singapore. He also wrote a collection of short stories in Malay.
Tan Tarn How ) is a Singaporean playwright and senior research fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies (Singapore). His plays have been staged in Singapore and Hong Kong, and have won numerous awards. In 2011, Epigram Books published a collection of six of his plays.
Kelvin Tong Weng Kian is a Singaporean film director, screenwriter and producer. He was a former film critic for the Straits Times.
Little Ironies: Stories of Singapore is a collection of seventeen short stories by Singapore author Catherine Lim. It was first published in 1978, in Singapore, by Heinemann under the Writing in Asia Series and earned for the writer much accolades. It is Lim's first published book of fiction. Little Ironies was later used as a set text for GCE 'N' Levels.
Wena Poon is a lawyer and novelist based in the United States. She writes English-language fiction. Her work has been seen by academics in the UK, US and Singapore as representative of the transnationalism of her generation.
Epigram Books is an independent publishing company in Singapore. It publishes works of Singapore-based writers, poets and playwrights.
Yeng Pway Ngon was a Singaporean poet, novelist and critic in the Chinese literary scene in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Leonard Francis Comber was a British military and police officer, and later book publisher, operating in British India, Malaya, Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia. He was also an editor and author of books relating to South-East Asia.
Lim Kay Tong is a Singaporean film, television and stage actor. Notably, he starred opposite Sean Penn in Shanghai Surprise (1986), Pierce Brosnan in Noble House (1988) and Claire Danes in Brokedown Palace (1999), and was the lead actor in Growing Up (1996–2001) and Perth (2004). Lim has been called "Singapore's finest actor", "Singapore's best-known actor" and Singapore's answer to thespians Ian McKellen and Alec Guinness.
Cheang Hong Lim JP was a Chinese opium merchant and philanthropist in Singapore. He was recognised by the British colonial administration as head of the local Hokkien Chinese community.
John Norman Miksic is an American-born archaeologist.