K.S. Maniam Malaysia

Bio
K.S. Maniam, born 1942, has been writing since his early teens. The inaugural recipient of the Raja Rao Award (New Delhi, 2000) for his outstanding contribution to the Literature of the South Asian Diaspora, he has published his stories in anthologies like Rim of Fire: Stories from the Pacific Rim (Vintage, 1992) and The Merlion and the Hibiscus (Penguin Books India, 2002). He has written five story collections. His novels include The Return (1981), In A Far Country (1993) and Between Lives (2003). His plays – The Cord, The Sandpit: Monologue, The Sandpit: Womensis and Skin Trilogy – were staged between 1984 and 1995.



What book would you like to snuggle under covers with, and why?
"The books I like to read are books that take me into the inner man or woman. This is because I’ve always been fascinated by that space within us which I feel, as a writer, as almost infinite. It’s in this inner space of the individual that we find the imagination living to its fullest and most expressive form. A book that puts you on to this imagination is a book worth taking trouble over. I can’t mention specific books but list the authors who’ve written such imagination-expanding works: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jose Saramago, W.G. Sebald, Patrick White, Kenzaburo Oe, to name a few."

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