1. WEEK 5 BBL 4306 LITERATURE OF MALAYSIA

2. LEE KOK LIANG BIOGRAPHY

3. INTRODUCTION  Born in 1927 in Sungai Petani, Kedah  A fifth-generation Chinese  Educated in both Chinese and English  lower education: Penang Free School & Chung Ling High School  higher education: Melbourne University  Return to Malaysia as qualified lawyer  Ventured into politics for a short while - served as a state assemblyman for oneterm after winning the Tanjung State Assembly seat  Began writing while still a student in Melbourne University

4. PUBLISHED WORKS  Novels: Flowers in the Sky; London Does Not Belong to Me  Novelette: The Mutes in the Sun  Short stories collection: Death is a Ceremony  Others: collections of Commonwealth short stories; journals and anthologies in the UK, Australia, Malaysia, and the US

5. CONTRIBUTIONS  Editorial Consultant of Tenggara (1967- 1969)  Judge in the New Straits Times Short Story Competition (1987-1992)

6. LEE KOK LIANG  Passed away on December 24, 1992 – was in the process of completing a compilation of short stories, The Magical Moments of Mollika and a book, Ah Tong and the Horseface Princess

7. DISCUSSION OF WORKS  Focused much of his work on the immigrant Chinese community  His writing is based on personal experiences and things that went around him  He wrote more on characters than incidents  The characters: often portrayed as sufferers who are caught in the whirl of life  Employed an ‘experimental style’  Experimented with various kinds of characters in his stories based on the people he met or read about

8. DISCUSSION OF WORKS  His novel and novella are classified as ‘truly Malaysian novels’  Laden with elements of local colour in the setting, speech, social structure and custom of a particular locality  The novels are written in a narrative method - creates a sense of realism in the portrayal of characters

9. DISCUSSION OF WORKS  Favourite literary genre is short story:  simple and unelaborated narrations of a single incident  dwell on the minds of his characters  often begins close to or on the verge of the climax  use ‘realism technique’:  narrative elements  the use of dialogue  the use local dialect  Often end without a conclusion – to allow creative and critical interpretations on the reader’s part