MPH Breakfast Club with ... Robert RAYMER

“COFFEE, CURRY PUFFS AND BOOKS:
WHAT A TANTALISING COMBINATION!”

The 15th MPH Breakfast Club on Saturday, July 26, 2008, at 11.00a.m. to 12.30p.m., will be featuring short-story writer Robert Raymer, the author of Lovers and Strangers Revisited (MPH Publishing, 2008). In this collection of 17 stories, Kuching-based Raymer portrays the traditional in modernity, the unexpected in relationships both familiar and strange, and the recurring theme of race even as contemporary Malaysia finds ways to understand its multicultural milieu.

In the title story, a selfish writer gets more than he bargained for when former lovers haunt him in more ways than one. In another story, a man’s loneliness turns into obsession when he shares a taxi ride with a Malay woman. A Clark Gable lookalike is a barrister wannabe with a shocking secret and gossipy neighbours reveal more about themselves than the man who commits suicide. Elsewhere, expats cross the border to Had Yai to experience a good bargain in the Thai flesh trade before going home to their wives in America.

In this republished edition of Lovers and Strangers Revisited, Raymer’s snapshots of scenes from various walks of life provide an insider-outsider view on love, family and culture, and urges a second look at ourselves in the mirror of self-awareness.

Eric Forbes will be introducing Robert Raymer while Tan May Lee will be moderating the session.

Date July 26, 2008 (Saturday)
Time 11.00a.m.-12.30p.m.
Venue MPH Bangsar Village II Lot 2F-1 (2nd Floor), Bangsar Village II, No. 2 Jalan Telawi 1, Bangsar Baru, 59100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Phone (603) 2287 3600

Food and refreshments will be served
All lovers of literature are most welcome

Robert Raymer will also be doing a reading at readings@seksan at 3.30p.m. on the same day. Seksan Design is at No. 67 Jalan Tempinis Satu, Lucky Garden, Bangsar, 59100 Kuala Lumpur


Praise for LOVERS AND STRANGERS REVISITED
‘Raymer not only writes from his own viewpoint as a foreigner and observer, but also delves into the minds of a desperate Malay woman, a young Indian girl, an adulterous Chinese couple, and an old Chinese man who survived the Japanese occupation ... He has an uncanny ability to hold a mirror up to the people of his adopted country, not as a foreigner but as one of us. His stories are full of personalities that you know—you work with them, or live next door to them, or eavesdrop on them at the kopi tiam.’ The Borneo Post

‘This account (“On Fridays”) of a crammed ride with strangers in a taxi may well stand as a metaphor of Raymer’s own experience of living among Malaysians .... He imbues each of the characters in his stories with a realistic, genuinely believable voice even as he tempers it with the valuable perspective of an observer.’ New Straits Times

‘Raymer gives a lushly and rich and multi-layered rendition of the Malaysian way of life as coloured and influenced by his own experiences from his twenty years as an expat here .... These stories are some of the few authentic portrayals of the inner workings and inner plays of the average Malaysian’s life in all of its robustness and unique cultural settings.’ The Expat

Robert Raymer was born in the U.S. and has lived in Malaysia for over 20 years. His fiction and nonfiction have been widely published. He currently lives in Kuching, Sarawak, where he teaches creative writing at Universiti Malaysia Sarawak.