To Epigram Books—Edmund Wee, Jason Erik Lundberg, JY Yang, Allan Siew, Winston Tay, Kate Manning—for bringing this book to life; to my readers: Chuah Guat Eng, James Scudamore, Martin Axe, Umapagan Ampikaipakan, Tash Aw; the Anne Frank Huis in Merwedeplein and City of Refugees programme in Amsterdam, the writing residency at “het” Spui, Amsterdam and the Nederlands Letterenfonds; Mireille Berman, Judith Uyterlinde, Ton Van de Langkruis, Willemijn Lamp, Chris Keulemans, Helene Bergmans, Francis Broekhausen, Gerda Roest, Tineke van Manen, David van Reybrouck, Merel van Tilburg, Tatiana Bosteels, Ashraf Ibrahim, Syahrita Chairaty, Ton van Bragt, Ming; the International Writing Program (IWP) 2014, Christopher Merril and all staff of the IWP in Iowa City, my fellow writers Ali Cobby Eckermann, Yeow Kai Chai, Natasha Tiniacos, Cynthia Edul, Tang Sui Wa, Franca Treur, Daren Kamali, Lawrence Ypil, Andrea Wilson and our conversations at the Fox; Peter Bradley and Cathryn Klusmeier at the Sitka Island Institute, Alaska; the Stewards for their beautiful home in Sitka; WrICE 2014 in George Town; Francesca Rendel-Short, David Carlin, Maxine Beneba-Clarke, Melissa Lucashenko, Eddin Khoo, Laurel Fantauzzo, Alvin Pang, Robin Hemley Amarlie Foster, Jennifer Down, and Harriet McKnight; Tim Tomlinson for publishing the fragment “The New Gods” in ducts.org; Scribe (Melbourne) for publishing the fragment “In the Eyes of the World”; Xu Xi and the City University Hong Kong Creative Writing MFA, Heidi Stalla at Yale-NUS Singapore, Valentine Willie and Karim Raslan, Jaime Thistleton and family, Tomasz Sajewicz, Sumitra Visvanathan and Sharaad Kuttan for access to the Saksi Archives, Sabri Zain and his Reformasi Diary; Omar Musa, Nisha Ayub, Sulastri Ariffin, Rozlan Mohd Noor, Tini Zainuddin, Alex Yoong, Gioia Guerzoni, Punita Visvanathan, Shirley Lim, Linda and Farouk Aljoffery, Yin Shao Loong, Hayati Mokhtar, Evelyn Hii, Alison Morgan, Lynda and Omar Merican. Thank you all.

About the Author

Photo by: Daniel Adams

Bernice Chauly is the award-winning author of five books of poetry and prose; going there and coming back (1997), The Book of Sins (2008), Lost in KL (2008), Growing Up With Ghosts (2011) and Onkalo (2013, “Direct, honest and powerful” —JM Coetzee). Born in George Town, Penang to Chinese-Punjabi teachers, she read Education and English Literature in Canada as a government scholar. She was an Honorary Fellow at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program (IWP) in 2014, has served as Festival Director of the George Town Literary Festival since 2011, and currently lectures at the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus (UNMC). She lives in Kuala Lumpur with her two daughters.