Cirrus@Austlit

'The Red Pearl and Other Stories is an invitation from an idiosyncratic but endearing bunch of misfits and outsiders to travel to emotional sites just beyond our GPS coordinates. Welcome to Kuala Lumpur, Paris, Namche Bazaar - but also to unnamed, weirdly recognizable spaces of desire, anxiety or nightmare. Here, race riots unfold in 1960s Malaysia; an 'Asian' student faces 'Go home' graffiti on incessant train rides around Sydney; dogs in love twirl and tumble in the high mountains of Nepal. Here, too, is the parallel Gothic world of the Shanghai Bar, where an Orientalist seductress bites back; and the concrete world of expatriate Kuala Lumpur where Dragon Princes and spirit travellers can also be found. Here is a vision of Sydney at its mythical best: golden, shaded in jacaranda blossoms and offering benevolent asylum to an array of newcomers and old hands. Moving between genres and cultures, the stories in this collection capture moments of intensity and yearning, points of turbulence or rest in the lives of characters who inhabit a globalised world. Their quest is for new arrangements of family, home, friendship and workplaces; new ways of living and loving in a rapidly changing world. The Red Pearl and Other Stories is award-winning novelist Beth Yahp's first collection of short stories.' (Publication summary)

'In this riveting memoir Beth persuades her ageing parents on a road trip around their former home, Malaysia. She intends to retrace their honeymoon of 45 years before, but their journey doesn't quite work out as she planned. Only the family mantra, ‘Eat first, talk later' keeps them (and perhaps the country) from falling apart. Around them, corruption, censorship of the media, detentions without trial and deaths in custody continue. Protests are put down, violently, by riot police.

Her parents argue, while, lovelorn after a failed relationship in Paris, Beth tries to turn their story into a Technicolor love story. Meanwhile, she's embroiled in a turbulent relationship with an opposition activist, Jing, who is at the forefront of the democratic struggle for change; and in Australia, Beth's second home, she is dismayed to see politicians on all sides focus on turning back the boats, stopping queue jumpers, controlling the borders of 'the lucky country'.

Eat First, Talk Later is a beautifully written, absorbing memoir of a country considered one of the multi-racial success stories of South-East Asia, with many fascinating but deeply troubling sides to it. It's a book about how we tell family and national stories; about love and betrayal; home and belonging; and about the joys of food.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Based on the idea of happiness as a fundamental, constitutional right, and the effect this pursuit might have on others.