Just to recap from my earlier blogs (dated Feb 4, 2010 and March 31, 2010) – back in 1971, the Booker Prize was revamped to honour the best novel of the year based on its year of publications. And so, many books published in 1970 were left without any opportunity of winning a Booker Prize… until this year.
The Lost Man Booker Prize is the brainchild of Peter Straus, honorary archivist to the Booker Prize Foundation.
Out of the shortlist of 6 titles,Troublesby J.G. Farrell (1935-1979)was picked as a clear winner of the prize. Troubles is the first in Farrell’s Empire Trilogy, which was followed by The Siege of Krisnapur and The Singapore Grip.
Set in Ireland in 1919, just after the First World War, Troubles tells the tragic-comic story of Major Brendan Archer who has gone to visit Angela, a woman he believes may be his fiancée. Her home, from which he is unable to detach himself, is the dilapidated Majestic, a once grand Irish hotel, and all around is the gathering storm of the Irish War of Independence.
An old man lies dying. Confined to bed in his living room, he sees the walls around him begin to collapse, the windows come loose from their sashes, and the ceiling plaster fall off in great chunks, showering him with a lifetime of debris: newspaper clippings, old photographs, wool jackets, rusty tools, and the mangled brass works of antique clocks. Soon, the clouds from the sky above plummet down on top of him, followed by the stars, till the black night covers him like a shroud. He is hallucinating, in death throes from cancer and kidney failure.
A methodical repairer of clocks, he is now finally released from the usual constraints of time and memory to rejoin his father, an epileptic, itinerant peddler, whom he had lost 7 decades before. In his return to the wonder and pain of his impoverished childhood in the backwoods of Maine, he recovers a natural world that is at once indifferent to man and inseparable from him, menacing and awe inspiring.
Tinkers is about the legacy of consciousness and the porousness of identity from one generation to the next. At once heartbreaking and life affirming, it is an elegiac meditation on love, loss, and the fierce beauty of nature.
Paul Harding
Paul Harding (born 1967) is an American musician and author, best known for his debut novel Tinkers (2009) which won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Harding was drummer for the band Cold Water Flat from approximately the founding in 1990 to 1997. Harding has a B.A. in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has taught writing at Harvard University and the University of Iowa.
Harding grew up on the north shore of Boston in the town of Wenham, Massachusetts. As a youth he spent a lot of time “knocking about in the woods” which he attributes to his love of nature. His grandfather fixed clocks and he apprenticed under him, an experience that found its way into his novel Tinkers. After graduating from UMass, he spent time touring with his band Cold Water Flat in the US and Europe. He had always been a heavy reader and while in the middle of reading Carlos Fuentes’ Terra Nostra he remembered putting it down and thinking “this is what I want to do”. In that book Harding saw the entire world, all of history. When he next had time off from touring with the band he signed up for a summer writing class at Skidmore College in New York. By pure chance his teacher was Marilynne Robinson and through her he learned about the Iowa Writers’ Workshop writing program and applied and was accepted. There he studied with Barry Unsworth, Elizabeth McCracken and later Marilynne Robinson. At some point he realized some of the people he admired most were “profoundly religious” and so he spent years reading theology, and was “deeply” influenced by Karl Barth and John Calvin. He considers himself a “self-taught modern New England transcendentalist”.
Musically, he admires jazz drummers and considers Coltrane’s drummer, Elvin Jones, the greatest.
Harding lives near Boston with his wife and two sons.
The contest that I ran last week, was somewhat different from my previous ones simply because all 3 books are rather different from one another. One revolves around the ‘Pop’ scene, another delves on the issue of Financial IQ and one that’s all about loving who we are.
Pop Babylon by Imogen Edwards-Jones and Anonymous gives us the “behind the scenes” look of the music scene we sometimes feel so fascinated about., but really we all know that it isn’t always a bed of roses. What with terms like “rehab” and “drugs” being regular jargon among some pop stars.
Those entertainers, and our mere selves should be able to learn a thing or two from Robert Kiyosaki’s Increase Your Financial IQ, because regardless of what we do or who we work for, the economy with its financial turbulence, will directly, or indirectly affect us all. Through this book, we will learn more about 5 basic financial IQs – making more $, protecting our $,budgeting our $, leveraging our $ and improving our financial information.
And thirdly, Love Your Life caps it all – that in our everyday life, there are bound to be challenges, be it struggles with $, our families, work, friendship, etc. It is what we do with each of these challenges that determine a life well lived! What I love about this book by Victoria Osteen is that there are occassional quotes throughout the book. This is one I just came across: “It’s okay to agree to disagree“. It happens to be the shortest quote in the book too.
Anyway, whether you agree or not.. the winners for this round of contest are as follows:
Yin
for Pop Babylon by Imogen Edwards-Jones & Anonymous (ISBN 9780593060308, valued at RM 69.90)
*****
Ady Ahmad
for Rich Dad’s Increase Your Financial IQ by Robert T. Kiyosaki (ISBN 9780446509367, valued at RM 66.90)
Named as one of the “50 Expats You Should Know” in Malaysia by Expatriate Lifestyle (January 2010), profiled in an upcoming edition of International Living, and featured on the talk show Kuppa Kopi (31 May 2010), Robert Raymer is an American writer and writing facilitator living in Sarawak on the island of Borneo. Until recently, he has taught Creative Writing for 13 years in Malaysia (ten years at Universiti Sains Malaysia and three and a half years at Universiti Malaysia Sarawak).
His short stories and articles have been published nearly 500 times; they’ve appeared in The Literary Review, Thema, Descant, London Magazine, Off the Edge, Reader’s Digest and The Writer (his latest in their May 2010 issue). Lovers and Strangers Revisited (MPH 2008), a collection of 17 short stories set in Malaysia have been published 65 times in 10 countries, taught in several universities, and won the 2009 Popular-The Star Readers Choice Awards.
His most recent book, Tropical Affairs: Episodes from an Expat’s Life in Malaysia (MPH 2009), is a collection of creative nonfiction about his experiences of living in Malaysia for over twenty years, including being an extra in three Hollywood films (Anna and the King, Paradise Road, Beyond Rangoon) and the French film, Indochine, which won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
One of his novels was a “short-listed finalist” in the 2009 Faulkner-Wisdom novel contest and another was “almost finalist” for their 2008 contest. He lives with his wife Jenny, (a Bidayuh from Sarawak) and their two children, Jason and Justin. He also has a son Zaini, featured in Tropical Affairs since he was a baby, but now studying in Kuala Lumpur.
Lovers and Strangers Revisited by MPH Publishing, us the winner of 2009 Popular-The Star Reader’s Choice Award. In this collection of 17 stories, Robert Raymer portrays the traditional in modernity, the unexpected in relationships both familiar and strange, the recurring theme of race even as contemporary Malaysia finds ways to understand its multicultural milieu.
In the title story, a selfish writer gets more than he bargained for when former lovers haunt him in more ways than one. In another story, a man’s loneliness turns into obsession when he shares a taxi ride with a Malay woman. A Clark Gable lookalike is a barrister wannabe with a shocking secret and gossipy neighbours reveal more about themselves than the man who commits suicide. Elsewhere, expats cross the border to Had Yai to experience a good bargain in the Thai flesh trade before going home to their wives in America.
In this republished edition of Lovers and Strangers Revisited, Raymer’s snapshots of scenes from various walks of life provide an insider-outsider view on love, family and culture, and urges a second look at ourselves in the mirror of self-awareness.
Tropical Affairs: Episodes from an Expat’s Life in Malaysia
Tropical Affairs: Episodes from an Expat’s Life in Malaysia
In Tropical Affairs: Episodes from an Expat’s Life in Malaysia by MPH Publishing, Robert Raymer has had the pleasure of chasing after a mad woman who stuffed his letter down her blouse, being trapped by a monitor lizard inside his own house, and being frisked by three men wearing pincushions.
He’s had close encounters with several Emmy- and Oscar-winning directors and actresses, including Bruce Beresford, John Boorman, Glenn Close, Catherine Deneuve, and Jodie Foster. He’s been arm-twisted into playing Santa Claus, misled on a night hike, and stood up on Valentine’s Day! He’s held a live crocodile in his arms and survived two operations with two of his sons, who naturally got all the attention. He’s been an extra in five movie scenes, written four books, fathered three sons, taught at two universities, and has, on more than one occasion, been completely out of luck!
In Tropical Affairs, a collection of creative nonfiction, the author gives a lush, multi-layered rendition of the Malaysian way of life, colored and influenced by his own experiences living in Malaysia.
The Munster Literature Centre is pleased to release the longlist for the 2010 Cork City – Frank O’Connor Short Story Award, now in its sixth year. The longlist is almost evenly split between women and men this year with 28 men and 26 women. The strength of the short story in the United States is reflected by that country’s overwhelming number of 21 longlistees. This year is also noted for a surge of entries from Asia, accounting for one fifth of all titles. There are three Irish nominees this year including Nuala Ni Chonchuir, the first author to be longlisted for the third time.
Household names in the running include novelist Louis De Bernieres, playwright and film star Sam Shepherd, T.C. Boyle, Michelle Roberts and short story specialist Helen Simpson.
The jury for this year consists of Irish novelist Mary Morrissey, Nadine O’Regan who is arts editor for the Sunday Business Post and Diana Reich, former Orange Fiction Prize judge and a curator of the Small Wonder short story festival in the south of England.
The Cork City – Frank O’Connor Short Story Award is the world’s richest and most prestigious prize for the form and is sponsored by Cork City Council. It is awarded to the best new collection of the year. Previous winners have included Haruki Murakami (Japan), Jhumpa Lahiri (USA) and Simon Van Booy (UK). On two occasions the award has gone to an author for their first book: Yiyun Li (China) in 2005 and Miranda July (USA) in 2007.
A shortlist of six will be announced at the beginning of July. The winner will be chosen in September and receive the award at the close of the world’s oldest annual short story festival in Cork.
The 2010 Cork City – Frank O’Connor Short Story Award Longlist
The Unauthorized Guide To Doing Business the Alan Sugar Way: 10 Secrets of the Boardroom’s Toughest Interviewer
The book will follow a similar format to the other ‘Big Shots’ titles in the series, but specifically will look to cover:
Investing in people: why they are your most important asset
Trust your own instinct: being yourself and being honest, the importance of reputation and a clear value system
When Push Comes to Shove: toughness versus bullying – it’s OK to be competitive and want to win/get the best
The Circle of Trust: surround yourself with people whose opinion you trust (Nick & Margaret) and encourage a loyal following (employees in AS companies are long serving and very loyal)
Killer Interview Tasks – how to prepare, what are they for anyway?
It’s all about selling – know your market, be competitive, price appropriately, believe in what you’re selling
Learning from others – respecting authority, learning from your mistakes (Alan’s made a few – and doesn’t like those who try to shirk responsibility)
Communication skills – everything is a negotiation.
The Unauthorized Guide To Doing Business the Bill Gates Way: 10 Secrets of the World’s Richest Business Leader
Quite simply Bill Gates is the world’s richest and most successful businessman of all time. His is not simply a story of technical brilliance and enormous wealth, it is one of a remarkable business vision and an obsessive desire to win. Learn how he has capitalised on his talent and hired the best people money could buy.
Brought completely up to date for this new edition, Business The Bill Gates Way not only reveals the secrets of Gates’ remarkable success but also draws out the universal lessons and identifies strategies that can be applied to any business or career. From hiring very smart people to loving what you make, and from crushing your competitors to never, ever taking your eye off the ball, Business The Bill Gates Way reveals the secrets of phenomenal success.
Bill Gates is a modern business phenomenon and most people agree that he is indeed the most successful cyber-tycoons. His is not simply a story of technical brilliance and enormous wealth, it is one of remarkable business vision and an obsessive desire to win. It is also about a leadership style that is radically different to anything the business world has seen before. How does he do it? And how does he keep on doing it? Business The Bill Gates Way reveals the secrets of Gates’ remarkable (and mind-boggling) success and shows how Gates’s tactics and specific strategies can be applied to any business or career.
The Unauthorized Guide To Doing Business the Duncan Bannatyne Way: 10 Secrets of the Rags to Riches Dragon
Duncan Bannatyne is worth £320million and sits at 167th in The Sunday Times Rich List. One of the UK’s most successful serial entrepreneurs with a portfolio of leisure businesses and a high profile media career, Duncan is one of the most popular Dragons in the BBC’s Dragons’ Den. His portfolio of Businesses includes the 61 Health Clubs by his name, the hotels and the residential property company. Duncan was awarded an OBE in the 2004 Queen’s Birthday Honours for his services to charity.
Duncan Bannatyne started life in a two-up, two-down in Clydebank near Glasgow. His rise to become a multimillionaire is a true rags to riches story – taking in a stint at the Navy along the way.
His first entrepreneurial venture was Duncan’s Super Ices in the North East of England. It expanded from a single ice cream van to a small fleet. Since then his business interests have progressed to include nursing homes, children’s nurseries and radio stations. He set up Bannatyne Fitness in 1997 and has grown the company to become the largest independent health club operator in the UK. So how did he do it and does he really believe in the title of his autobiography ‘Anyone Can Do It’?
Chapter 1: From the Navy to multi-business tycoon – what makes an entrepreneur.
Chapter 2: Can Anyone do it? Can tycoons be made or are they born? Duncan’s recipe for success.
Chapter 3: The Right Idea: how do you turn it into reality?
Chapter 4: So many business ideas – so little time! From hotels and fitness to nurseries and radio stations how do you make them all successful?
Chapter 5: Commitment and Dedication – the most important two words in business.
Chapter 6: 99’s or fitness centres – keep the customers coming back for more.
Chapter 7: Careful nurturing is the way to grow businesses.
Chapter 8: The biggest fitness business in the UK – is biggest always best?
Chapter 9: Into the Dragon’s Den: the importance of Media Profile – help or hindrance?
Chapter 10: Charity Worker and business angel – why it’s important to give something back.
The Unauthorized Guide To Doing Business the Jamie Oliver Way: 10 Secrets of the Irresponsible One-man Brand
Love him or loathe him, Jamie Oliver is one of the most well known, passionate and richest celebrity chefs in the world. But there is more to the man than his linguine. He towers over a business empire that comprises restaurants, shops, cookware, food, magazines, books, DVDs and television production. How does he maintain his brand name and values across such diverse interests?
Business the Jamie Oliver Way draws out the universal lessons from Oliver’s remarkable success and identifies his 10 secret strategies to business growth and branding that can be applied to any business or career:
ONE: Be yourself, but more so
TWO: Extend the Brand
THREE: Build on what you’re good at
FOUR: Remember the social dimension
FIVE: Become the face of a supermarket
SIX: Deal with adversity
SEVEN: Go international
EIGHT: Protect the brand
NINE: Be controversial
TEN: Be bold
Want success? Discover the secrets of the people who already have it.
Business the Jamie Oliver Way is an unofficial, independent publication, and Capstone Publishing Ltd is not endorsed, sponsored, affiliated with or otherwise authorized by Jamie Oliver.
The Unauthorized Guide To Doing Business the Philip Green Way: 10 Secrets of the Billionaire Retail Magnate
Not one to mince his words people either love him, or hate him but it’s hard to dispute that Sir Philip Green is a multi-talented entrepreneur. Sir Philip fell into retail almost by accident but it’s made him a fortune. Some go so far as to argue he’s the finest retailer of his generation and one of the best business brains in the UK.
A middle class, Croydon-born Jewish boy, who left school at 16 without a single qualification, he’s now number 6 on the latest Sunday Times Rich list – up from 9th last year despite the recession. After leaving school, Philip Green worked for the family firm, one of the first shoe importers to bring products in from China and Hong Kong. Experience of international trade taught him about finance, credit, importing and product.
After four false starts he made his first million at 33, with Jean Jeannie. It was a struggling fashion chain when he bought it for £65,000 in the mid-1980s. He sold it six months later for £3m. Many such deals later, he owns the Arcadia group – running about an eighth of the UK clothing retail market. His empire is the second largest in the sector after Marks & Spencer. In 2005, he paid himself a £1.2bn dividend from Arcadia which he bought in 2002 with only a few million pounds of his own money.
This book explores the secrets of how Sir Philip Green built his business empire:
Chapter 1: From rag trader to business man who sells fashion.
Chapter 2: Find out what your customers want and give it to them, and more, in-store, online it’s the experience that counts.
Chapter 3: Buy the best. Whatever your position in the market buy the best you can sell in your price range.
Chapter 4: Hire the best. Hang the CV – find out what they really can do.
Chapter 5: We’re all in it together – the retailer, the customers and the suppliers. Without the suppliers there’s nothing to sell – look after your supply chain.
Chapter 6: Efficiency rules even in the good time. It’s not the same as cost cutting.
Chapter 7: Borrow little, repay quickly and build the business. Service the debt, keep the costs down and worry about profits in the good times.
Chapter 8: Deals, deals, deals. Don’t buy it if you can’t see what it needs to operate efficiently and the potential it offers you.
Chapter 9: The tough times – work harder to stay still. The more efficient you are going into recession the better you’re equipped to survive.
Chapter 10: Staying private rather than going public – the advantages and disadvantages.
Business the Richard Branson Way: 10 Secrets of the World’s Greatest Brand Builder, 3rd edition
In many ways, Richard Branson and his company the Virgin Group are unique. In an era dominated by strategists, Branson is an opportunist with an uncanny knack of sniffing out great deals where others hesitate or fear to tread. Never before has a single brand been so successfully deployed across such a diverse range of goods and services. Branson is the ultimate brand builder.
So how does he do it? Now bought completely up to date for this new edition, Business the Richard Branson Way, not only reveals the secrets of Branson’s remarkable success but also draws out the universal lessons and identifies strategies that can be applied to any business or career. From picking on someone bigger than you to moving faster than a speeding bullet, and from making work fun to keeping the common touch, you have in your hands the secrets of phenomenal success.
The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize is the UK’s only literary award for comic writing. Established in 2000 and named in honour of P G Wodehouse, past winners include Paul Torday in 2007 with Salmon Fishing in the Yemen and Marina Lewycka with A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian 2005 and Jasper Fforde for The Well of Lost Plots in 2004.
The winner is announced at the annual Hay Festival in May and is presented with Champagne and 52 volumes of the Everyman Wodehouse edition. In addition, a Gloucester Old Spot pig is also named after the winning novel.
The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction 2010 Shortlist
Ian McEwan’s first comedy, Solar (Jonathan Cape), is on the shortlist for this year’s Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction.
Also on the shortlist are Skippy Dies by Paul Murray (Hamish Hamilton), Tiffany Murray’s Diamond Star Halo (Portobello), One Day by David Nicholls (Hodder & Stoughton) and Malcolm Pryce’s From Aberystwyth with Love (Bloomsbury).
The winner will be announced at the Hay festival at the end of May.
Solar by Ian McEwan
The literary event of the summer: a new novel from Ian McEwan, as surprising as it is masterful. Michael Beard is a Nobel prize–winning physicist whose best work is behind him. Trading on his reputation, he speaks for enormous fees, lends his name to the letterheads of renowned scientific institutions, and half-heartedly heads a government-backed initiative tackling global warming. While he coasts along in his professional life, Michael’s personal life is another matter entirely. His fifth marriage is crumbling under the weight of his infidelities. But this time the tables are turned: His wife is having an affair, and Michael realizes he is still in love with her. When Michael’s personal and professional lives begin to intersect in unexpected ways, an opportunity presents itself in the guise of an invitation to travel to New Mexico. Here is a chance for him to extricate himself from his marital problems, reinvigorate his career, and very possibly save the world from environmental disaster. Can a man who has made a mess of his life clean up the messes of humanity? A complex novel that brilliantly traces the arc of one man’s ambitions and self-deceptions, Solar is a startling, witty, and stylish new work from one of the world’s great writers.
Skippy Dies by Paul Murray
Ruprecht Van Doren is an overweight genius whose hobbies include very difficult maths and the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. Daniel ‘Skippy’ Juster is his roommate. In the grand old Dublin institution that is Seabrook College for Boys, nobody pays either of them much attention. But when Skippy falls for Lori, the Frisbee-playing Siren from the girls’ school next door, suddenly all kinds of people take an interest – including Carl, part-time drug-dealer and official school psychopath. While his teachers battle over modernisation, and Ruprecht attempts to open a portal into a parallel universe, Skippy, in the name of love, is heading for a showdown – in the form of a fatal doughnut-eating race that only one person will survive. This unlikely tragedy will explode Seabrook’s century-old complacency and bring all kinds of secrets into the light, until teachers and pupils alike discover that the fragile lines dividing past from present, love from betrayal – and even life from death – have become almost impossible to read…
Diamond Star Halo by Tiffany Murray
Halo Llewelyn’s prayers begin, Dear God and Otis Redding, because she lives at Rockfarm, a rural recording studio where the sound of tractors and Stratocasters battle. One midsummer night an American band called Tequila arrives in a beautiful silver bus, and when they and that summer are gone, they leave behind an equally beautiful baby boy; they leave Fred. Fred is everybody’s favourite, a golden child, and Halo adores him. By seventeen his ambition has propelled him out into the word and into the stardom that was always his destiny. Yet up on stage, being screamed at by hundred of teenage girls and boys, Fred will always turn his spotlight on Halo in the crowd. That’s the problem with falling in love with your charismatic almost-brother: it can never be a secret. In the end, the whole world has to know. A seductive story of fate, magic, and rock ‘n’ roll, “Diamond Star Halo” shows what happens when a family and a farm become the breeding ground for fame.
One Day by David Nicholls
‘I can imagine you at forty,’ she said, with malice in her voice. ‘I can picture it right now.’ He smiled without opening his eyes. ‘Go on then.’ 15th July 1988. Emma and Dexter meet for the first time on the night of their graduation. Tomorrow they must go their separate ways. So where will they be on this one day next year? And the year after that? And every year that follows? Twenty years, two people, One Day.
From Aberystwyth with Love by Malcolm Pryce
It is a sweltering August in Aberystwyth: the bandstand melts, the Pier droops, and Sospan the ice-cream seller experiments with some dangerously avant-garde new flavours. A man wearing a Soviet museum curator’s uniform walks into Louie Knight’s office and spins a wild and impossible tale of love, death, madness and betrayal. Sure, Louie had heard about Hughesovka, the legendary replica of Aberystwyth built in the Ukraine by some crazy nineteenth-century Czar. But he hadn’t believed that it really existed until he met Uncle Vanya. Now the old man’s story catapults him into the neon-drenched wilderness of Aberystwyth Prom in search of a girl who mysteriously disappeared thirty years ago. His life imperilled by snuff philatelists and a renegade spinning wheel salesman, Louie finds his fate depending on two most unlikely talismans – a ticket to Hughesovka and a Russian cosmonaut’s sock.
Barry Wain, author of Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times is an Australian journalist who is a Writer-in-Residence at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. A former editor of the Asian Wall Street Journal, Wain has written many well known popular books and one of them is ‘The Refused’ which is an account of the refugee outflow from Indochina after the Vietnam War.
He spent 37 years of his life in Asia and wrote one of the most controversial articles ‘New Philippine Revolution’ which created waves all around. Barry Wain is a writer with his own realistic form of writing which is clear in facts i.e. unbiased. Wain in his latest book on the Malaysian Maverick Mahathir Mohamad presents various aspects of his character and the situation that he dealt with very straightforwardly and thus crediting Mahathir for engineering the country’s economic transformation, deepening industrialization and expanding Malaysia’s middle class.
Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times
Malaysian Maverick by Barry Wain
The book Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times is about the Malaysian Prime minister Mahathir Mohamad and his political journey in times of disturbance. The author Barry Wain talks tries to explore various aspects of Mahathir Mohamad’s personality.
According to Wain Mahathir one hand being a Malayan Heroic figure was a fiercely tireless campaigner on the other who advocated against the domination by the Western economy. The author expounds the unknown persona of Mahathir by this book by the series of exhaustive interviews he had with him.
The author says that there is much more yet to be known in his personality rather than just what he has always presented himself in the outer world and the entire world’s perceives about him.
The issue that catches attention in this book is about the assertion that around RM100 billion may have been wasted like water on huge projects undertaken by Mahathir in order to engineer the modern Malaysia we see today by revolutionizing industries and underneath these projects also accompanied corruption.
Wain also writes that Malaysia was left handicapped due to its national car policy thus making Thailand the major center for car manufacturing.
The author portrays a very balanced description by throwing light on the fact that though the Malaysian Maverick directed all his plans towards the notion of modern, industrialized and globally respected nation of Malaysia for which he even directed the ruling party into business but this accelerated corruption as party’s nature and goals changed. Consequently this led to massive financial scandals. Though involvement of Mahathir in any of this corruption is not confirmed anywhere yet all these disturbances left him unapologetic.
The author concludes in the final chapters of his book that despite of these turbulences and confusions Mahathir created the very nation that he dreamt about that is the modern industrialized Malaysia with its iconic twin towers. Although the corruption that accompanied the process of transformation of Malaysia has much to blame on Mahathir only due to his dissolution of independent judiciary but still he proved to be true to the title given to him as The Malaysian Maverick.
Mahathir, as he himself confessed to the author says that even today he has resentment towards the west, the British in particular. The author writes about this exhaustively that this very antagonism against the British has been a hallmark of his career.
This book thus captures Mahathir Mohamad, the PM of Malaysia for 22 years in true unbiased light, highlighting his true personality and the political situations that Malaysia went through to be what it is today. For all those who would like to explore this Malaysian Maverick and his nation must get started as this is an appreciable piece of work.
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