Writing in Asia Series

Writing in Asia Series was a series of books of Asian writing published by Heinemann from 1966 to 1996. Initiated and mainly edited by Leon Comber, the series brought attention to various Asian Anglophone writers, like Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Western writers based in Asia like Austin Coates and W. Somerset Maugham and modern and classic stories and novels in English translation from the Malay, Indonesian, Thai and more. The series is also credited with contributing prominently to creative writing and the creation of a shared regional identity amongst English-language writers of Southeast Asia. After publishing more than 110 titles, the series folded after Heinemann Asia was taken over by a parent group of publishers and Comber left.

Inspired by the successful and pioneering African Writers Series, Leon Comber, the then Southeast Asian Representative of Heinemann Educational Books Ltd., founded the series as its general editor in 1966 in Singapore. Comber thought a similar series focussing initially on Southeast Asia was worth pursuing to "give a tremendous boost to creative writing in English...which was still regarded then as something of a cultural desert". He also wanted to publish the "tremendous body of local writers writing in their local languages" across the entire Asia in English translation "to make it available to a wider reading public" as he felt that existent publishers only focussed on their individual countries.

Buoyed by the profits made from textbook publishing, the series first published Modern Malaysian Chinese Stories in 1967. The anthology, whose stories were edited and mainly translated into English by Ly Singko with a foreword by Han Suyin, sold moderately, but Ly was to be detained without trial shortly after by the Singapore authorities under the Internal Security Act for supposed "Chinese chauvinism".

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