When a Malaysian novel is written, published, distributed and sold outside Malaysian borders, to what extent is it still a Malaysian novel?

My doctoral dissertation explores contemporary transnational cultural productions in Southeast Asia in relation to both local literary histories and wider Western-based frameworks such as World and Postcolonial Literature. I chart the history of Malaysian literary discourse over three centuries in order to make sense of the contemporary.

This project is supported by the School of Culture & Communication at the University of Melbourne. It is funded by the Australian Department of Education Research and Training Programme (RTP).

August 2025
Liew, Brandon K. and Daryl Lim Wei Jie. "Critical Introduction." In the Mirror: New and Selected Poems of Wong Phui Nam, edited by Brandon K. Liew and Daryl Lim Wei Jie, National University of Singapore Press, 2025. 

'Memory of Khorason', 2005, by Latiff Mohidin. Used as book cover with permissions.

Liew, Brandon K. 2021. “The Unquiet Dreams of Lesser Malaysian Writers: Tradition and the Global Malaysian Novel”. Archiv orientální 89 (2), 283-310. https://doi.org/10.47979/aror.j.89.2.283-310. ​ 

Cited by Theo D'haen in A History of World Literature published by Routledge.
29 May 2024
DOI: 10.4324/9781003366713
ISBN: 9781003366713

Cited by Kuei-fen Chiu & Táňa Dluhošová 
14 October 2021 
DOI: 10.47979/aror.j.89.2.223-236 ​ 

"Brandon Liew, in his essay “The Unquiet Dreams of Lesser Malaysian Writers: Tradition and the Global Malaysian Novel,” introduces another perspective which is crucial for discussion of Asian literatures and cultures, namely postcolonial discourse. The article addresses the complexity of this question within the context of multilingual and multicultural Malaysia. Some of the most prominent transnational Malaysian writers, such as Tash Aw and Tan Twan Eng, use English for their literary production. Others such as Lee Yungping, Ng Kim Chew, and Chang Kuei-hsing, use Chinese. Any discussion of the success stories of these writers in the English or Chinese/Sinophone worlds would benefit from consideration of the uncongenial publishing environment for minority writers like them in a country where national literature is defined as literature in Malay. How can we study the global Malaysian novel as world literature without overlooking its relationship to the threefold entanglement of tradition, nation, and language? Liew’s article reveals the intricate tension between national literature and world literature."

Liew, Brandon K. “Engmalchin and the Plural Imaginings of Malaysia; or, the ’Arty-Crafty Dodgers of Reality.” Exclamat!On: An Interdisciplinary Journal 2 (June 2018): 94–120.
​
Cited by Poetry.sg
11 June 2021
Critical Introduction of Wang Gungwu
Written by Jonathan Chan
http://www.poetry.sg/wang-gungwu-intro