Salina Christmas

A reader bought the sequel to my first novel, fascinated by the history behind the tales. But my story isn’t about history. It’s a wartime horror fantasy. Still, I’m humbled when my readers, through my tales, find aspect of the past that they find personally meaningful.

I was elated that a reader in London, UK, bought the sequel to my first novel six months after she read The Keeper Of My Kin. The first book, she said, features stories of events that had occurred between 1941 and 1957, that somehow didn’t make it to our school syllabus.

The sequel she bought this month, A Request For Betrayal, features an even obscure history of Malaysia – the regional conflict between 1963 and 1965 that finally led to a major truce and the formation of our federation.

Unless you’re a strategist studying the Templer approach to governance during a tricky transitional period, or a policy maker studying the highly concealed diplomatic negotiation between Malaysia and Indonesia during the three-year ‘Confrontation’, it’s hard to know the details of our history. But you can read about them in my books – in between the ghost stories.

My discovery about my country’s history is that, like my characters, things aren’t always black and white. The reductivity of the textbook means that many details get left out, to be forgotten by the younger generation.

My stories, however, aren’t a study of history. They’re just fantasy fictions about ghosts and magic woven around these events. But it’s nice to have readers saying to me: ‘I didn’t know the nuances of that period until I read you ghost stories’. My discovery about my country’s history is that, like my characters, things aren’t always black and white. The reductivity of the textbook means that many details get left out, to be forgotten by the younger generation.

There are pieces of history I discovered during my research that are little known: the Japanese rice programme in the 1940s that changed the way Malayans harvest rice forever (twice a year instead of once a year); the creation of the Kiwi infantry regiment on the back of the Confrontation in the 1960s; the “winning the hearts and minds” policy hatched out Gerald Templer (and his Malayan civil servants) during the Emergency Period in Malaya. Unless it’s your business to know them, you don’t have to know.

I’m always humbled when my readers say they learn a bit more about a particular situation from my story. Because I learned a bit more just by reading historical accounts written by other people. It’s amazing how non-fiction, in this instance history, feeds into fiction, and in turn, shines a light on an aspect of the past that the reader finds personally meaningful.

Thank you, dear reader.

There are pieces of history I discovered that are little known: the Japanese rice programme in the 1940s that changed the way Malayans harvest rice forever. The “winning the hearts and minds” policy hatched out Gerald Templer. Unless it’s your business to know them, you don’t have to know.