Search results for ""Penguin Random House SEA""

A collection of juicy tales about individuals hungering for a better life.In the terrain of untidy relationships lies an ensemble of individuals coupled or alone, each driven by desire, cravings, or folly. How To Hunger is a smorgasbord of short stories about how humans hunger— for love, lust, and loyalty—where their voracity for the ordinary and sublime consumes them to the very end.A Singapore emigrant chews over her sense of belonging. A vegetarian Western tourist finds a meatier version of Asia in a massage parlour. A young couple deepens their romance through home-cooked cuisine. A friendship between Taiwanese and Singaporeans ages over a decade like fine wine. An office worker’s submerged desires bubble over in a hotpot restaurant. A married woman is tempted by the sweet gifts of a suitor. An undertaker gets a taste of a spicy side of life. And a widower gets triggered by the scent of a curry puff.

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A decade ago, Burma was full of light and hope. Today, it has descended into darkness and despair. The once promising political and opening up of the country has been set back, possibly for a long time. How did this happen? This book will provide a timely and insightful account of the political situation in Burma, assessing why the country experienced the coup, what the implications are for the people of Burma and the Southeast Asian region, and what role the international community can play to prevent Burma becoming a failed state.

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‘An engrossing read … a testimony of Eva Wong Nava’s attention to period details and exquisite storytelling skills’- Felix Cheong, award-winning author of Sprawl: A Graphic Novel ‘A beautiful, haunting, visceral experience. You'll savour the sights, sounds and smells of pre-WW II Singapore and be mesmerized by a cast of characters as delicately layered and sumptuously rich as a delicious kueh lapis. If this book were a dish, it would deserve five Michelin Stars. Eva Wong-Nava cooks up a special tale that will be savoured by generations to come.’- Dave Seow, children’s book author of more than 45 books A SUPERNATURAL EXPOSÉ OF A PAST SYSTEM THAT STILL HAS A TIGHT GRIP ON CONTEMPORARY SINGAPORE AND MALAYSIA It's August of 1931 in Singapore, sixteen-year-old Lim Mei Mei (Ah Mei) arrives at the home of Eminent Mister Lee on the eve of the Hungry Ghost Month. She has been sold to the family as a mui tsai, an indentured servant girl. At the Lee household, Lim Mei Mei's life education begins. There she encounters the spirit of Ah Lian, a mui tsai, who paid the ultimate price for her mistake. Through Ah Lian, Ah Mei discovers the plight of mui tsai, who are both helpless and powerful, and uncovers a shameful secret lurking in the shadows in the Lee house. Ah Mei also meets and falls in love with Hassan Mohamed, an Indian-Muslim and an aspiring poet, breaking every clause in the rule book of love in 1930s British Malaya. She becomes Hassan's Polar Star, and the young lovers must find a way to stay together. Through a twist of fate, Ah Mei finds a solution that will keep her and Hassan together, at the same time gaining agency that will secure her own future as an uneducated servant girl in British Malaya.

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Stories of courageous underdogs who battled against disadvantages and challenges, and emerged victorious in pushing humanity forward. Ordinary is not as ordinary as you think. History is written by the loudest and most charismatic victors, but are silent about the true movers and shakers: the rebels, the honest servants, the quiet doers, the square pegs in a round hole, and the ordinary believers who kept showing up. Sang Kancil will force us to reassess what is truly important and remind us of what we are capable of. Filled with research-backed theories, this book is a call to action for the underdogs battling our own giants.

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Not your typical business-autobiography-‘I’ve made it in life’ book I started a blog. I borrowed USD 16,000. And now, I’ve built a multimillion dollar fashion company, garnered 1.8 million followers on Instagram and managed to squeeze in time to get married and give birth to not one, but four children.Perfect for young entrepreneurs, this book shares the secrets of my entrepreneurial journey so far—from starting a business with my boyfriend (telling my dad sure was fun), to fundraising, to managing a team of 400 people, to dealing with the good and bad of social media, and to pretending to nod when my tech team talks about cookies.I share my proud wins for you to get inspired by, and my juicy failures for you to eat popcorn to. Always a work in progress, my story is unfinished.But for now, allow me to present to you, The First Decade.

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DISCOVER THE WONDERS OF SOUTHEAST ASIA THROUGH ARTExploring Southeast Asia with Chuah Thean Teng takes the reader through the Malaysian batik painter‘s life in Penang, Malaysia, where Chuah opened a batik factory following WWII. Focusing on his life after the closure of his batik factory, we see how Chuah persevered to make art with batik, becoming the father of batik painting. Through Chuah’s paintings, readers will learn about the importance of batik in Malaysia's art world as well as the techniques of batik and batik painting. Chuah's artworks were featured in UNESCO’s greeting cards in 1989. Readers will also get a glimpse of a Malaysian kampung and a Malaysian way of life.

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Will Great Grandmother’s birthday wish be fulfilled?Amelia is a modern, nine-year-old Peranakan Chinese girl. She adores her Great Grandmother whom she nicknamed GGM. GGM has lots of exciting tales to tell her about old Singapore. She takes Amelia to see the site of her old kampung, an attap-thatched village along the Kallang River where she had met Amelia’s famous namesake and aviatrix, Amelia Earhart, the historical Queen of the Sky, in June 1937. GGM is very active and does not behave like a doddering Senior. She started skiing at sixty and wants to do something adventurous for her 90th birthday. But the entire family does not approve.

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A nation is exiled from itself to prison; a nation is re-awakened through the storytelling of its origins; understand Indonesia through Pramoedya’s books In 1981, a new company, Hasta Mitra, founded by three men just released from over a decade in prison, published a novel written in a prison camp by Pramoedya Ananta Toer. The novel was This Earth of Mankind. It told the story of the early gestation of the Indonesian national awakening. The dictatorship eventually banned it after several months of tactical struggle by the three men, Pramoedya himself and the fighters of Hasta Mitra, Joeoef Isak and Hasyim Rachman. In defiance of the dictatorship, they went on to publish the three sequels to This Earth of Mankind, each time followed by another battle and then a ban.

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What happens when one goes from obscurity to celebrity, overnight?Thirty-year-old Arya Alvarez is a travel manager at Isle Z, a luxury travel company in Singapore where she creates bespoke trips for celebrities and influencers. Discretion is her specialty at work and personal life: Few people know that she’s fled her home city, Manila, to get away from the scene of a devastating break-up.When she travels to Svaneti, in the Republic of Georgia, Arya briefly encounters the mysterious Dave in a remote village high up the Caucasus mountains. Intrigued, she posts his photos on Instagram—which goes viral the very next day. Turns out, Dave is Davit Nadibaidze, a famous yet reclusive artist who’d retreated from the public five years ago and Arya is the first person to see him since he disappeared.In less than twenty-four hours, Arya gains hundreds of thousands of followers. She’s deluged with invitations to talk shows, influencer parties, and celebrity junkets, all as her social media apps overflow with DMs, tags, and comments, both nice and nasty. Men are suddenly vying for her attention, including her ex, Jake.

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How far would you go to visit that place in your head?All Gemma Young remembers of her childhood are her regular visits to the idyllic, imaginary Neverland before her mother fell sick.When Gemma meets Cole, a disenchanted boy who stirs up more than just memories of her adventures in Neverland, she begins to piece together her half forgotten childhood: her mother sick with longing for Neverland, the accident that ripped her family apart, and her father who abandoned her when she was a child.But now, Gemma’s near-obsessive quest to find her father sends her spiralling deeper into Neverland just like her mother had. As the boundaries blur between the real world and Neverland, Gemma must sift through fact and fiction, discern between truth and make-believe, to find out what happened to her mother and rebuild a new life with her father.

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A heart-wrenchingly honest chronicle of an introverted gamer geek who tries to win his best friend’s heart but is forced to rethink his game plan when a new challenger steps into the ring Eighteen-year-old Nathaniel Carpio has been having chicken inasal with his best friend Elena Dizon at their favourite sidewalk grillery for four years now, but when Lena whips out a silly ‘six-peso coin’ to comfort him on a bad day, Nat realizes that he’s fallen in love with her.Eager to spend the rest of his life with Lena, lovesick Nat believes they should both apply to the college program held by the developers of their favourite real-time strategy game, Mitolohiya. But just when his game plan is coming along nicely, in pops a new challenger - Rafael Antonio, the world-renowned Filipino voice actor for the hero Apolaki in the game. Now, star-struck Lena spends all her time bonding with her online idol and Nat starts to feel more and more like a boring NPC.With his future hanging in the balance, Nat embarks on an epic quest to compete with the celebrity in a real-world PvP match he’s not ready for.

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Get a gripping glimpse into the therapy room and most powerful boardrooms in Asia in this first ever self-help collection of essays by an expatriate therapist from New York City. In more than a decade as a psychotherapist to some of Asia’s most powerful couples and business people, expat New Yorker Allison Heiliczer has seen it all.From toxic offices and complex relationships, boardroom power and bedroom failure, doomed marriages and ill-advised affairs, workaholism, loneliness, lies; these are struggles more common than many of us care to admit. Heiliczer lays them all bare through the prism of culture and is expert in understanding what makes those embroiled in them tick.

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Radical Islam is an enduring global challenge that presents a national and international security threat. Instigation by hate preachers, inadequate government, societal attention, religious and reciprocal radicalization have allowed this threat to manifest into terrorist violence. Extremist ideologies have infiltrated religious, educational, and digital spaces and thus, terrorism’s shadow continues to shroud the safety and stability of countries and communities worldwide today.On 21 April 2019, the world’s most dangerous threat movement, the Islamic State, mounted one of its deadliest attacks in Sri Lanka. The surge of fear, suspicion, and prejudice following what is now known as ‘Sri Lanka’s Easter Sunday Massacre’ fragmented the country, imbuing hatred and anger against the Muslim community. Years later, the radicalization pipeline remains intact, and the threat persists. With the global expansion of the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, will the world witness attacks of a similar or greater scale in the future?Equal parts treatise and reference material, this book answers this question by tracing the genesis, threat trajectory, and aftermath of the bombings and the personalities behind them. With unprecedented access to accounts from Islamic State detainees, affected families, intelligence specialists, and investigators, the book reflects on lessons learned and provides insight into how such attacks are organized and what measures can be taken to prevent or respond to these threats effectively.

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As a British teenager, I meet a beautiful Burmese girl on the school bus. Her family self-exiled in 1964, soon after the military coup, to start a new life in England. My fascination is fired for this far-off land.How did Burma, with such a regal past, swathed in natural beauty and populated by a people of unmistakable poise and serenity slide into repression and obscurity? How can the up-beat memories of April's parents be reconciled with Myanmar's current malaise?Over 16 years I recorded the oral history, anecdotes and reminiscences of her family who were eye witnesses to momentous events in mid-century Burma. These together with more recent conversations - with Aung San Suu Kyi and a range of Burmese millennials - provide a unique portrait of Myanmar stretching back to April's great, great grandfather in 1852.For all the woes of this country, whispers of hope can be heard.

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DISCOVER THE WONDERS OF SOUTHEAST ASIA THROUGH ARTExploring Southeast Asia with Anita Magsaysay-Ho focuses on the Filipina artist who was part of a group of artists known as the Thirteen Moderns in the Philippines. She was the only woman in the group. Magsaysay-Ho is a Social Realist painter who documented the life and culture of the Philippines in the early 20th century. Through her art, the story will take readers through the history of the Philippines and how women formed a large part of the labour force. The story invites young readers to examine the life of a female artist, the constraints as well as the liberty of being the only woman in a group of renowned male artists.

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When the prophesied hero dies one day before the world needs saving, 13 year-old Julian Kee is randomly chosen as a last-minute replacement. With absolutely no world-saving skills whatsoever, he must nonetheless lead his friends into the Underworld to retrieve a magical rock that can save their world. The problem is that the ruling council of the Underworld objects to their quest, and the rock can only be obtained by passing through a series of terrible trials, including navigating an unsolvable maze, enduring unspeakable tortures in the dungeons of the council’s citadel, and facing a really cute bunny. And is the Underworlder who cheerfully volunteers to risk her life to help them simply a girl with a very kind, selfless heart, or is she really a spy for the council?A fast-paced adventure filled with lots of exciting twists and turns, this hilarious spoof of adventure/hero stories will be enjoyed by both the young and the not-so-young!

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A compelling story of friendship that starts in a university dormitory and stretches over time and across continents as each roommate chases her unique destinyRoom 216 is about four strong female characters and their complex experiences. It tells the story of university roommates, each with a unique motivation and struggle. After graduation, Sandy, Tintin, Serene, and Issa embark on separate journeys that take them to different parts of the world. Over time and across continents, the roommates chase their respective destiniessome pursuits end in triumph, while others in unbearable loss.

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