Description

---

Recent social and political upheaval in Malaysia has taken many analysts by surprise, but the stresses and fissures in Malay society have been vividly described in Malay novels since the early 1960s. Writing a New Society is the first extended study of the novel in Malay and is a groundbreaking study of the relationship between social change and literary practice. The book traces the emergence of the genre from the 1920s and, drawing on twenty-six of Malaysia's best-known novels, argues that the form was developed as a vehicle for transforming Malay ideas about themselves and their society.

About the Author

---

Virginia Hooker is the author of Culture and Society in New Order Indonesia, Perceptions of the Haj and the forthcoming A Short History of Malaysia (May 2000). She is Reader in Indonesian in the Faculty of Asian Studies at the ANU. Her edition of The Precious Gift is to be republished in a Malay Classics series edited by Anwar Ibrahim, the Deputy PM of Malaysia.