Ghosts and the Spirit World in SEA Films and Literature
This week we are featuring an edited volume on Southeast Asian horror cinema and three novels dealing with the intersection between the supernatural and everyday life.
Ghost Movies in Southeast Asia and Beyond
Edited by Peter J. Bräunlein and Andrea Lauser
Ghost Movies in Southeast Asia and Beyond explores ghost movies, one of the most popular film genres in East and Southeast Asia, by focusing on movie narratives, the cultural contexts of their origins and audience reception. – KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies
The Ghost Bride
Yangsze Choo
Malaysian writer Yangsze Choo’s first book uncovers colonial British Malaya and the Chinese afterlife. Li Lan, the daughter of a respectable Chinese family in colonial Malaysia, hopes for a favorable marriage, but her father has lost his fortune, and she has few suitors. Instead, the wealthy Lim family urges her to become a “ghost bride” for their son, who has recently died under mysterious circumstances. Rarely practiced, a traditional ghost marriage is used to placate a restless spirit. Such a union would guarantee Li Lan a home for the rest of her days, but at what price? – Amazon
Man Tiger
Eka Kurniawan
A wry, affecting tale set in a small town on the Indonesian coast, Man Tiger tells the story of two interlinked and tormented families and of Margio, a young man ordinary in all particulars except that he conceals within himself a supernatural female white tiger. The inequities and betrayals of family life coalesce around and torment this magical being. An explosive act of violence follows, and its mysterious cause is unraveled as events progress toward a heartbreaking revelation. – Amazon
Apple & Knife
Intan Paramaditha
The debut work of Indonesian fiction writer and scholar Intan Paramaditha, these stories set in the Indonesian everyday – in corporate boardrooms, in shanty towns, on dangdut stages – reveal a soupy otherworld stewing just beneath the surface. This is subversive feminist horror at its best, where men and women alike are arbiters of fear, and where revenge is sometimes sweetest when delivered from the grave. – Penguin