Told slowly from the point of view of a self-professed murderer to a bold post-graduate student, the story is especially entertaining for those who know the area of Kuala Lumpur and the Klang Valley. Set in modern times, the novel hits on themes of prejudice, refugees, classism, and race.
Set in 1930's Malaya in and around Ipoh, this novel borders on magical realism and relies on the intersecting storylines of two main protagonists, told in different voices. From the first chapter where a young boy is tasked with a deathbed command of finding a severed finger, the reader is hooked and the momentum doesn't let up.
I discovered this memoir while visiting the eponymous Agnes Keith House in Sandakan. The wife of a British Office stationed in the then-capital of Borneo, this memoir (one of several she penned) covers the time when the family - Agnes, her husband, and young son George - were interned in a Japanese Prisoner Camp after being captured during the Japanese occupation of the region in the 1940's. While the un-ironic colonialist undertones are there, they don't distract from Keith's work as an important piece of documented history.
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