Southeast Asia

Overview

Manuscripts here were long written on palm leaf, a support that survives no more than a few centuries in the tropics: almost nothing remains from before the fifteenth century except through successive copies. Nguyen Du's Tale of Kieu, composed around 1820, is known by heart in Vietnam. The modern novel was born with the colonial press and often against it: Rizal published Noli Me Tangere in 1887 and was shot nine years later, and Pramoedya composed This Earth of Mankind by dictating it to fellow prisoners on Buru island.

What circulates

Malay and Indonesian are the same language under two names, which gives this literature a readership of three hundred million spread over two states. Elsewhere each country reads in its own language and translates its neighbours little: a Thai novel and a Burmese novel have little chance of meeting except in English.

Limits of this grouping

The zone gathers two worlds that religious history divides: the insular, Muslim since the fifteenth century, and the mainland, Theravada Buddhist, to which are added Vietnam of Chinese tradition and the Catholic Philippines. East Timor, Lusophone and independent since 2002, has almost no publishing.

Works cited

• PoetryThe Tale of KieuTruyện KiềuNguyễn Du · 1820A long poem from the beginning of the nineteenth century, in vernacular script and popular metre, about a young woman whom filial duty throws out of her own life.Literature
• CinemaNoli Me TangereNoli me tángereGerardo de Leon · 1961José Rizal's foundational novel brought to the screen for the centenary of its author's birth.Cinema
• NovelThis Earth of MankindBumi manusiaPramoedya Ananta Toer · 1980The youth of a Javanese educated at a colonial school, first volume of a tetralogy born in a prison camp.Literature
• CinemaInsiangLino Brocka · 1976A young girl from Tondo caught between a blinded mother and the man she has installed in her home.Cinema