BOOKS FROM MALAYSIALake Like A Mirror
by Ho Sok Fong
Tags:
Set in Malaysia
Female author
Description:
Winner of a PEN Translates award By an author described by critics as "the most accomplished Malaysian writer, full stop," Lake Like a Mirror is a scintillating exploration of the lives of women buffeted by powers beyond their control. Squeezing themselves between the gaps of rabid urbanization, patriarchal structures and a theocratic government, these women find their lives twisted in disturbing ways. In precise and disquieting prose, Ho Sok Fong draws her readers into a richly atmospheric world of naked sleepwalkers in a rehabilitation center for wayward Muslims, mysterious wooden boxes, gossip in unlicensed hairdressers, hotels with amnesiac guests, and poetry classes with accidentally charged politics--a world that is peopled with the ghosts of unsaid words, unmanaged desires and uncertain statuses, surreal and utterly true.
Reviews:
(3 months ago) |
14 Sep, 2024
I really like some of these stories, but as with all short story collections I didn't like them all. The prose is lovely, but sometimes not readily intelligible, perhaps purposely so or perhaps it makes more sense in the original language. A very quick read!
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