SHORT STORIES FROM AFRICA
AND ASIA
 
Woodrose Publications, Singapore 1976




Edited by Chandran Nair & Theo Luzuka

About the Collection:

Short stories from Africa & Asia  is a collection of seven stories by two African and two Asian writers.  The stories themselves show in fascinating detail the similarities and contrasts in the mode of thought and behaviour of the four writers and also of Africa and Asia.  This is clearly seen in the degree of preoccupation, the technique used and the writer's own sense of involvement with the story.

The writers represented are:

K.S. Maniam,   a graduate student of English literature at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur and a committed short story writer.

Theo Luzuka, an Ugandan graduate student of English literature in English expression (and more pertinently Asian literature in English) is currently with the English Department of the University of Singapore.

Peter Nazareth, an Ugandan novelist and essayist now lecturing in the University of Iowa whose social concern and committment are clearly seen in his two novels and essays.

Chandran Nair,  a Singaporean poet and writer who has published two books of his own poems, and a book of translations of the poetry of the Chinese poet, Lee Hou Chou (with Malcolm Koh).  He is currently chairman of the Society of Singapore Writers.

Contents

Her Only Child---Theo Luzuka

Leta---Chandran Nair

A Matter of Habit---Chandran Nair

The Schoolgirl--Theo Luzuka
  

A Real Emergency---Chandran Nair

Eccentric Ferns---Peter Nazareth

The Eagles--K.S. Maniam

 


 


 PRESS REVIEW

BOOST TO LOCAL PROSE WORK
 

By K'o Tsung Yuen

New Nation  21 Feb 74

Bookshelf

   This volume adds significantly to the sparse prose work in print in English here.  The book  is a collection of seven stories by four writers (including the two editors) -- two African and two Asian.  Chandran Nair's already known Leta is here together with two other simpler stories.
   Theo Luzuka, a Ugandan research scholar now in the Singapore University, contributes  two stories in, as expected, an African setting.  The other two authors are Peter Nazareth, a Goanese-African who has two published novels and a book of literary criticism to his credit and K.S.
Maniam, a graduate student in Literature at the University of Malaya.
   Taken together the anthology provides striking examples in differences of style, diction and approach. . . .Luzuka's strength is his vigour of treatment --- one can, in his marshalling of words, almost feel the crack of the hippopotamus pizzle whip from The Schoolgirl on the skin.
   This is in contrast to the tightly controlled jaundiced use of words in Leta and the rich, echoing use of sound, language and rhythm of K.S. Maniam's Tamil rubber estate worker setting of The Eagles.  This last story runs to 44 pages, and is a challenge to the reader to understand in English translation  the working of the Tamil mind -- the way in which a young boy made to become a "dhobi", to fetch and carry takes his suffrage.
   Into this is woven childhood memory, description of people and places and the inhumanity that everyday life sometimes carry.
   This book, it is to be hoped, is a smart start, and further offerings from this publisher, the only one to exclusively publish local creative work, will be looked forward to.