Yalpanam: A Novel

A tale about the search for wholeness set in present-day Malaysia with time-travelling journeys into the past.. ‘Yalpanam’ an old colonial house on Coal Island in Malaysia is swarming with ghosts. Its inhabitant one hundred and eighty-five year old recluse Pushpanayagi has been avoiding them for decades. But that is about to change. When eighteen-year-old neighbour Maxim Cheah disgruntled at home arrives on an apparent whim at ‘Yalpanam’ they begin an unlikely friendship that will rock Maxim’s world and send Pushpanayagi whirling through space-time back to 19th century and 1940s Malaya. Will the ghosts of the old lady’s past—a rigid British lepidopterist his melancholic first wife his deceptively vibrant second wife their opium-addicted servant—release her? What will Maxim discover from her friendship with her enigmatic neighbour?