About the book: 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 (2017) is a debut novel of profound insight.
Once We Were There is shortlisted for Singapore Book Awards 2018 (Best Book Cover Design); winner of the Penang Monthly Book Prize 2017 and winner of the Popular-The Star Readers' Choice Awards 2018.
About the author: Bernice Chauly is a Malaysian writer, poet, and worldbuilder. Born in George Town, Penang to Chinese-Punjabi teachers, she read Education and English Literature in Canada as a government scholar. The author of seven books of poetry and prose, her body of work straddles the personal and political; she has written and directed short films, plays and documentaries, acted on stage, TV and film, and worked with marginalized communities as an artist, activist and curator, creating an extensive, multi-genre body of work for more than three decades. In 1998, she began organising literary events in Kuala Lumpur and in 2005, founded Readings, the longest-running live literary platform in Kuala Lumpur.
In 2011, she was Festival Director for the Writers Unlimited Tour Kuala Lumpur/Makassar and was the Festival Director of the George Town Literary Festival in Penang (2011 – 2018) which won the London Book Fair’s International Excellence Awards 2018. She was also the co-founder of PEN Malaysia. She is currently working on the open-world, AAA video game Contraband, set in 1970’s South East Asia, currently in development with Avalanche Studios (Sweden) and XBox.
Rating: 5/5
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