Once We Were There - Tapa blanda

ONCE WE WERE THERE is a timely and important novel. First it plunges the reader into the social, cultural and sexual environment of KL at the turn of the millennium. Then it tells a story which is both heartbreaking and gripping, and deftly illustrates the inextricability of the personal and the political. --James Scudamore, Somerset Maugham Award-winning author of THE AMNESIA CLINIC

A love song to thwarted motherhood and the blunted dreams of the Reformasi movement, ONCE WE WERE THERE is as Malaysian as teh tarik - sweet, dark and a jolt to the senses. --Mei Fong, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist

An exhilarating fiction with a breathless, breakneck pace, like the new Malaysia it lovingly and bitingly tells on, with corrupt, idealistic, greedy, confused, identifiably Malaysian ordinary-native-citizens-politicians-power-monger-dispossessed-resistant characters to usher in a generational shift in sensibility. A must read for all who track Malaysian literature into the 21st century. --Shirley Geok-lin Lim, author of AMONG THE WHITE MOON FACES American Book Award winner

Journalist Delonix Regia chances upon the cultured and irresistible Omar amidst the upheaval of the Reformasi movement in Kuala Lumpur. As the city roils around them, they find solace in love, marriage, and then parenthood. But when their two-year-old daughter Alba is kidnapped, Del must confront the terrible secret of a city where babies are sold and girls trafficked. By turns heart-breaking and suspenseful, ONCE WE WERE THERE is a debut novel of profound insight. It is Bernice Chauly at her very best.