The Night Tiger, set in pre-independence Malaya during the 1930s, is a mystery thriller that follows a Chinese houseboy, Ren and a dancehall girl, Ji Lin. Image credit: New York Times bestselling author of The Ghost Bride, which was recently adapted to a Netflix film, Yangsze Choo is gracing our reading list again with another of her famous dark fantasy stories. Her upcoming novel, The Girl And The Ghost, will be published by HarperCollins in August 2020. She has been writing for most of her adult life – graduating with a degree in journalism, then embarking on a career as a copywriter, beauty writer, corporate writer, and finally an author now. Image credit: riveting tale of history, mental illness, humanity, and action, Hanna Alkaf’s debut novel is about a 16-year-old Malaysian girl suffering from OCD who goes on a harrowing quest brimming with chaos and violence, to reunite with her mother in the midst of the 1969 racial riots in Kuala Lumpur.Īlkaf received an astounding reception for The Weight of Our Sky and has even gone on to become the first Malaysian to win the Freeman Book Awards earlier this year. Written by our very own Malaysian writers from the acclaimed Yangsze Choo and Tash Aw, to new blood like Ho Sok Fong and YZ Chin, these 9 new titles span across just about every genre, so there’s something for you, regardless of your literary leanings. Whether you are a veteran bookworm looking to curate your new reading list, or an occasional light reader, you’ll want to check out this list of new Malaysian novels. It’s only natural to reach for more prolific Western authors’ books when we go book-shopping, but Malaysia’s literary scene has also produced extraordinary books by Malaysian writers such as The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng and The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo, that have garnered notable awards, Netflix adaptation, and movie rights.

New books written by Malaysian writers in 2020

Though I Get Home by YZ Chin