Novel
The Last Days of an Artist
Hari-hari Terakhir Seorang Seniman
Anwar Ridhwan · 1979
Synopsis
Pak Hassan is the storyteller of a Malay village, a penglipur lara, in the time of the British colony and then of the Japanese occupation. He is in mourning for his wife, and his son, Mat Junuh, cannot inherit his art. Times are changing, and the village children now prefer the radio to the stories he holds from oral tradition.
Context
It is the author's first novel; it appeared in 1979 from Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, in a volume of one hundred and seventy pages. The book portrays Malay rural life and the place held in it by the storyteller, keeper of an oral literature that modernity pushes aside. Johan Jaafar made a play from it, published in 1988 by the same publisher. The French translator, Monique Zaini-Lajoubert, devoted a paper to the difficulties of rendering in French the systems of measurement and the realities of the Malay world.
Who it is for
A short novel, which can be read in French as well as in English; it assumes knowing what the storyteller was in the Malay oral tradition.
Prizes and reception
First prize in the novel competition of the Sabah Foundation and the federation of writers' associations, in 1979.
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