While the literary world frets about the novel's future in the internet age, author Preeta Samarasan says the Web is only feeding fiction with fresh stories.
Her first novel, Evening is the Whole Day, is winning rave reviews in the US and Britain, making Samarasan, 32, the new name on a growing list of accomplished cosmopolitan Malaysian novelists. She has spent most of her adult life in the US and France, and has yet to meet Tash Aw, Tan Twan Eng or Rani Manicka, the leaders of this Southeast Asian literary set. But they keep in touch and help each other cultivate their hip little movement.
'The artistic scene in Kuala Lumpur is small enough that we all know lots of people in common,' says Samarasan from her home near Le Mage, central France. 'I feel that I do have a connection with them.'
Samarasan, like her compatriots, writes fiction that makes a Malaysian guidebook just about superfluous. Evening is the Whole Day bounces between generations, taking on a complex nation's history and the more convoluted action within the wealthy Rajasekharan family. Samarasan includes everything from recipes to the tension among Chinese, Malay and Indian cultures as she covers the foibles of a country taking shape after the departure of the British colonialists.
'There is a lot happening in Malaysian literature,' Samarasan says. 'I'm hesitant to draw a cause-and-effect relationship, but it's happening at the same time as the development of the internet.
'The internet has engendered a freedom of thought and a freedom of speech that people were afraid to indulge in before.
