Book review - The Sum of Our Follies by Shih-Li Kow
Since learning that Malaysian writer Shih-Li Kow’s collection of short stories – Ripple and Other Stories - was shortlisted for the 2009 Frank O’Connor Short Story Prize, coming ahead of collections by prestigious authors like Ali Smith and Kazuo Ishiguro among others, I’ve been meaning to get around to reading her work.
In the mean time she wrote her first novel, The Sum of Our Follies, which has been translated into French (by a blind man) and Italian, and also won the French 2018 Prix du Premier Roman étranger.
Last November I met the writer herself in person at the George Town Literary Festival and I had to confess that to my shame that beyond a single short story published in a collection of Malaysian writing I still hadn’t read any of her work. This obviously needed to be remedied, so I bought both of her books at Gerakbudaya’s new bookshop in Hikayat on George Town’s Beach Street.
I started by reading her most recent work, The Sum of Our Follies. I was not disappointed. While her …
In the mean time she wrote her first novel, The Sum of Our Follies, which has been translated into French (by a blind man) and Italian, and also won the French 2018 Prix du Premier Roman étranger.
Last November I met the writer herself in person at the George Town Literary Festival and I had to confess that to my shame that beyond a single short story published in a collection of Malaysian writing I still hadn’t read any of her work. This obviously needed to be remedied, so I bought both of her books at Gerakbudaya’s new bookshop in Hikayat on George Town’s Beach Street.
I started by reading her most recent work, The Sum of Our Follies. I was not disappointed. While her …
Comments
Post a Comment
Feel free to comment or provide proof-reading feedback.
Thanks
Marc