Hello everyone,

We’re back with another podcast episode! This month, we spoke to literary translator, author, playwright, and diehard Mynah fan Jeremy Tiang.

The starting point of our episode was Jeremy’s translation of Hai Fan’s Delicious Hunger, which has just been published in Singapore with Ethos Books. Hai Fan is a Singaporean writer who spent thirteen years, from 1976 to 1989, as a soldier of the Malayan Communist Party. The book is a collection of short stories heavily inspired by his time in the rainforest. It is a fantastic book for many reasons: its insider view of a chapter of Singaporean history that’s not often spoken about, its visceral prose, and its testament to the very human belief that a better world is possible.

We also talk about the Marxist conspiracy to make us all touch grass and how none of us would survive even a day in the rainforest.

I’m a big fan of the Tilted Axis edition’s cover of Delicious Hunger. It’s a photograph taken by Sim Chi Yin of a makeshift prosthetic leg made during the war between the MCP and the British colonial army.

Soldiers had restricted access to supplies in the rainforest and had to make do with what they have. Their inventiveness features throughout the book. I was especially struck by the long descriptions of them tending to crops and hunting for meat, knowing full well that they could lose their limbs or lives the next day due to a landmine.

You can listen to the episode now on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

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Here are some notes from the episode, most of which are links to more of Jeremy’s work:

• Jeremy’s translation of Hai Fan’s Delicious Hunger is out in Singapore now with Ethos Books. Look out for his translations of Shuang Xuetao’s Hunter and Zhang Yueran’s Women, Seated later this year. His Obie Award-winning play Salesman之死 might be staged somewhere next year. That’s all we can say for now!

• Jeremy has also translated Yeng Pway Ngon, who he describes in the episode as “the best novelist that Singapore has ever produced”. Yeng’s Unrest was originally published in Chinese as《骚动》and won the Singapore Literature Prize in 2004.

• Besides Yeng Pway Ngon, Jeremy has also translated fiction by other Cultural Medallion winners like Wong Yoon Wah and You Jin. You can find some of the Cultural Medallion series by Epigram Books, a project to translate major works by past literary winners of the Cultural Medallion into English, here.

• Hai Fan’s first novel, 雨林的背影, won the Singapore Literature Prize for Chinese Fiction last year. It’s set in the aftermath of the Hat Yai Peace Agreement (1989), following characters as they leave the rainforest, re-enter civilian life and reflect on the decades that they spent in the rainforest. Jeremy and Hai Fan are looking for a publisher for the English translation, which is tentatively titled Out of the Rainforest.

• s/pores journal has published a special issue on Hai Fan, in which you can read Jeremy’s essay Nature-writing: On Translating Hai Fan. He’s also written about translating Hai Fan’s work in the Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s special issue on the Malayan Emergency.

• Peace Villages and Friendship Villages refer to a group of settlements located in the mountains outside the southernmost Thai town of Betong, where many MCP cadres have lived since the Hat Yai Peace Agreement was signed by representatives of the MCP, the Thai government, and the Malaysian government in 1989. As Jeremy explains, different factions occupied the Friendship Villages—the Communist Party of Malaysia—and the Peace Villages—the Communist Party of Malaya, but they're friends again now.

• The Malayan Communist Party accidentally assassinated Henry Gurney, the British High Commissioner in Malaya (1948-1951), during an ambush designed to seize supplies from the British. This took place at a high point of the First Malayan Emergency and preceded military strikes from the colonial government and the evacuation and mass detention of Tras New Village inhabitants.

• The Transformative Justice Collective is a movement seeking the reform of Singapore’s criminal punishment system, starting with the abolition of the death penalty.

• Jeremy’s novel State of Emergency follows a family as they navigate major political upheavals in Malaya, Singapore, and Malaysia. It will be published by World Editions in the US and UK in June this year. The Chinese edition was translated by Lim Woan Fei and Chen Si’an. It has also been translated into German by Susann Urban.

• The International Booker Prize, for which Jeremy has been both on the jury and longlisted (of course), is one force behind the increased recognition for literary translators and translation. Jennifer Croft, whose translation of Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights won the International Booker Prize, started a campaign to get publishers to include translator’s names with the writer’s the front cover of books. You can read the open letter and view its signatories here. Yes, Jeremy’s there too.

Jeremy’s Favourite Things:

• Blue Prince: My current obsession, a puzzle game in which you wander around solving mysteries in a mansion whose rooms magically change position every day. Requires attention to detail and meticulous note-taking, which I realise doesn't sound like fun to most people, but I am a Capricorn.

• We, The Citizens: Kirsten Han's newsletter is essential reading for anyone who cares even slightly about how Singapore is run. She's been providing thoughtful, nuanced commentary for years in the face of very difficult odds, and deserves all the support she can get.

• City Book Room: A beautifully curated bilingual bookshop with an emphasis on local lit? Shut up and take my money.

• Masterchef Australia: The most wholesome of all the Masterchefs, plus you get to learn the absolutely deranged names Australians have for food. A chicken is a chook, a toasted sandwich is a jaffle, there is a frozen dessert called a Golden Gaytime. It's fair dinkum. (Editor’s note: Masterchef Australia is indeed the best one.)

• Ayam penyet: Some days you just need a makcik to pull out a little hammer and briskly smash your food in front of you, IYKYK.

This is going to be the last interview of the podcast season before we head full-tilt into the magazine production period. We do have one more episode coming your way soon, though! No prizes for guessing what event of national importance we’ll be covering next. We’ll also be back on Thursday with our final roundup of resources for the General Election. See you soon!