Malay Setches

Ma critique du livre Malay Sketches publiée sur GoodReads. Vu que j’ai lu le livre en anglais, la revue est en anglais.

Once a label of colonial taxonomy, Malay Sketches becomes in Sa’at’s hands an act of reclamation. His 48 vignettes chip away at the old impulse to flatten a people into a manageable form, with scenes where Malay lives refuse to sit still: defiant girls, uneasy interfaith romance, myth brushing against modernity. Not every sketch cuts equally deep, but the cumulative effect is prismatic, exposing the colonial taxonomies that carved the Malay Peninsula into legible types and never quite let go.

— Jacques Duquesne