Nazry Bahrawi is a Singaporean scholar-translator based in Seattle. Working between Bahasa Melayu and English, he has translated works by Singapore's Cultural Medallion winners Mohamed Latiff Mohamed (Lost Nostalgia, Ethos Books, 2017) and Nadiputra (Muzika Lorong Buang Kok, Cokelat, 2012). Singa-Pura-Pura is his first hybrid creative work that features short stories from Singaporean Malay authors that were either translated or originally written in English. He is currently translating the eighteenth-century Malay animal fable Hikayat Raja Babi featuring a swine-king.
From a future of electronic doas and AI psychotherapists, sense-activated communion with forests and a portal to realms undersea, to a reimagined origin and afterlife—editor and translator Nazry Bahrawi brings together an exciting selection of never-before translated and new Malay spec-fic stories by established and emerging writers from Singapore.
Especially in an anglophone-dominated genre, very little of Malay speculative fiction from Singapore is known to readers here and beyond. Yet contemporary Bahasa literature here is steeped in spec-fic writing that can account as a literary movement (aliran)—and unmistakably draws from the minority Malay experience in a city obsessed with progress.
This book contains a mix of speculative fiction stories written in English and translated to English from Malay. This is another beautiful way to present translations, and particularly important to the culture of Malay writers. Often writing from a minority experience within Singapore or from the broader diaspora, this collection shows that one is not less authentically Malay if they do not write in their mother tongue. –E.D.E. Bell
"This richly varied collection illuminates the deep roots of Malay speculative fiction as well as the field's bright futures."
– Emily Mercer, Wasafiri magazine"A fascinatingly psychedelic blend of Singaporean/Southeast Asian visions: mythic, horrific, utopian, dystopian, technocratic, transcendental. These are stories of marginality, struggle and survival in a city-state obsessed with a future that may not include us all."
– Ng Yi-Sheng, author of Lion City (Co-winner of Singapore Literature Prize 2020)"A delightful collection of stories showing off the depth and breadth of imagination in Singapore. People deal with rebellious shadows and AI alike in these thirteen tales that present visions of a speculative past, present and future."
– Neon Yang, author of The Tensorate Series (Hugo, Nebula and Lammy Award Finalist)Prologue: "A Literary Movement from Down South" by Faisal Tehrani
and yet, how is it that having read Sejarah Melayu—the mother of all speculative fiction—I have not written in this fashion myself or how is it that this literary movement can only hail from the South?
Truth be told, the Malays are no stranger to speculative fiction. Which other culture in the world can boast of a king who, having reigned over vast territories on land, then decides to plunge into the depths of the sea to explore other possibilities?
Asks His Highness Raja Suran in Sejarah Melayu, "Now that I know the content of the land, what of the sea and all its glories?"
The moment he descended into the sea was when the Malays began speculating all manners of their future.
Is it not traceable to that moment that a bored prince then came to Temasek, an island fertile for speculation? From the imaginary of our ancestors, extraordinary futures were conjured. Of the superhero with incredible strength named Badang and the relentless onslaught of the garfishes from distant oceans. These are not even all of it. Sejarah Melayu is miraculous on account that the Malays are told thereupon that the lineages of great Chinese and Indian kings can be tracked to their intermarriages with Malay princes and princesses.
That may be the reason why a handful hold the view that the Malays are the tuan, though from another perspective, it can also be taken to mean that Malayness is a trait common to all.
Yet where is the place of the Malays in Singapore amidst the vehement speculation by the non-Malays there? Lest we forget, the venture of speculation began with the Malays. If not for the Palembang prince named Sang Nila Utama who had encountered a creature akin to a lion after being forced to beach himself on the island in the wake of a storm abound with lightning; if not for this attempt at speculating, it could be that Raffles might not even have had a port city to discover.
Therefore, reading this anthology of speculative fiction by the progeny of Singa, from the pura down south, is nothing short of moving. Are we reading the new Sejarah Melayu to last the next thousand years?
Perusing this collection of stories spurs us to rethink what it means to be Malay (a civilisation whose most renowned text of speculative fiction is Sejarah Melayu as I have outlined), and to consider that the narrative strategies that you will encounter are just as enchanting as the tale of Tun Jana Khatib who, for magically halving a pinang tree was sentenced to death by the side of a locksmith's shop, but whose corpse then magically flew to the island of Langkawi up north. Now, does this not sound fitting as the literary movement that I am now describing from the South? Indeed, this enchanting tale hails from the pura Singa down below.
What more, readers will get to experience the agony of a tight-knit minority community. Several times over, the question of identity surfaces in multiple manifestations, mulled over and over in the pursuit of greater clarity. In the likeness of Sejarah Melayu's sensational strangeness, the stories channel the desire of the authors to make sense of an environment that has become increasingly demanding and ruthlessly competitive.
The bottom line of the matter is that, regardless of the new and notable technological and scientific breakthroughs they describe, these stories are all about the search for what is in essence human in space and the oceans, even if they appear pessimistic.
This anthology will transport you to other worlds. They speak of the limited choices available to humans made morose by technology, or they articulate the author's inner struggles within the limits of this form accorded to them.
I am, for instance, struck by the story "(A)nak (I)bu", a creative piece by the late Tuty Alawiyah Isnin that speculates the future human self and the pain of elusive love, which meaning can only be determined by a psychiatrist-robot. Meanwhile, Pasidah Rahmat's "The Chip" explores the struggle for freedom in a world where humans are implanted with a nano-chip that binds them to authoritarian regulations.
These two stories alone have raised in me a thousand and one questions. Here are two Malay authors who exemplify what Margaret Atwood had said of this genre—speculative fiction that offers us a glimpse of what can happen.
The anthology that is in your hands now bears what is arguably the true definition of speculative fiction. It originates from a civilisation born out of speculation, from a pura built by a king who lives and breathes speculation. Without a doubt, you will find in here fiction fashioned from science, fantasy, mythology, superhero tales, horror and suspense, utopia and dystopia that we had chanced upon in Sejarah Melayu several thousands of years ago.
In this anthology, we come face to face with voices speaking in the tone of marginality, or read in another way: speculative strategies to overcome the worsening disregard for heritage and language. Almost every author discusses this, with the most evident being "Doa.com" by Hassan Hasaa'Ree Ali and the story "Mother Techno" by ila.
In the hands of Farihan Bahron, we encounter doubt about cryptocurrency, and while we can catch a whiff of his scepticism, it does not come across as patronising.
I have no intention of spoiling every single story here, but I will say that "Tujuh" by Nazry Bahrawi possesses a bite that lingers long after you have put the book down, even after a good night's sleep, and when you wake up the next morning—the mark of Tujuh's bite appears to be eternal.
In your hands is the inkling of a movement. The authors have traversed far from Robert A. Heinlein who is enamoured by science fiction as well as transcended the New Wave movement initiated by Judith Merril. These stories appear to me as a fresh take on the genre. They are birthed from a community whose origin was pregnant with speculation in the first place. This is a collection drawn from traditional narratives, entangled in technological turmoil and scientific advancements, curated by members of a society with both utopian and anti-utopian impulses. Their speculations are knitted as tales of apocalypse or the possibilities of rebuilding that world torn asunder; they are no blockbuster tales of male and female superheroes, because they also speak of mystical forces that have long been around and the ability to re-interpret history for real.
In your hands is a literary movement. Gabriel Garcia Marquez once helmed magic realism. But—yes, this is purely speculative—it might be because the South invented Sejarah Melayu, the mother of all speculative fiction, and this could be a new trend: this anthology is testament to the new stylish literary movement of Malay speculative fiction from the South!
Faisal Tehrani
Kajang, 2019
