Language, Translation and (Chinese) Malaysian Literature

Abstract

Renowned writer Han Suyin spent about 12 years in Malaya (1952-1964) as a physician, writer, lecturer and vocal public intellectual. Having married Leon Comber, a British officer in the Malayan Special Branch, she moved with him to Johor Bahru and then worked at the General Hospital and opened a clinic on Jalan Ibrahim. Her novel And the Rain My Drink, published in 1956 during the height of the Malayan Emergency, dealt extensively with the lives of people affected by the counter-insurgency tactics taken by the British colonial authorities (of which her then-husband was a member), but showed subtle sympathy for the communist guerrilla forces. Later in the 1960s, the prolific writer and the bestselling author of A Many-Splendoured Thing would style herself as a spokesperson of communist China to the West, whose controversial views on Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution would be widely criticised. Show more