Author: Simone Lazaroo
Publisher: Indialog Publications
Year: 2001
Language: English
Pages: 275
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8187981083
Description
A stylish, imaginative work, this novel charts, with insights, wit and grace, the uncertain progress of an outsider in search of both her personal history and a meaningful place in the world.
A young woman journeys back to her birthplace, Singapore, and to Malacca, her ancestral home, to discover rich, complex and mysterious aspects of her own identity. Aspects of herself that had only been half remembered, hinted at, or understood during a dislocated childhood and adolescence growing up in contemporary suburban Australia.
EXCERPTS FROM REVIEWS:
The experiences of a woman caught between two cultures as she juggles life as a young adult with memories of her ancestors' exotically quirky world… a mercurial imagination, a gift for satire and a wry intelligence.
— Sydney Morning Herald
This is an exciting book, as exotic as it is familiar, and one which promises Lazaroo will be a writer to watch.
—Australian Bookseller and Publisher
A lucid picture of racial discrimination, the pains of adolescence and of the search for inner peace.
— Canberra Times
Malaccan stories of the sea intermingle with Australian beach culture. Lazaroo's experiences compel her reader to question the sometimes tenuous sense of connection, and the legacy of what there is to pass on.
Contents
Mixed Offerings
New Flavors for Old Nipples
Fugitive
The Way to the Afterlife
Bricks and Mortar and Other Charms
All Things to All Foreigners
Prizes
The Asian Disease
Escapes
Transformations
An Asian Antartica
Never Pity a Man
Talking About the Good Times
Fish Out of Water
Food and Forgiveness
Salvaging the Inheritance
Aromatic Pyrotechnics
New Shore
Epilogue