Preamble

Disclaimer: Most of my thoughts here are speculative and in no way constitute definitive statements on the state of Bruneian literature in English. For more rigorous analyses, I can point you towards some of my academic work on Bruneian literature in particular: I have an article in the Journal of Commonwealth Literature, a book chapter in The Use and Status of English in Brunei Darussalam: A Kingdom of Unexpected Linguistic Diversity, a forthcoming chapter in a volume called Women in Postcolonial Southeast Asian Literature and another forthcoming article in a special issue of the journal World Englishes. I discuss various aspects of Bruneian literature and narrative-making in English and Malay in these publications, including representations of women, horror story tropes, and the imaginative horizons of Bruneian fiction.

I have followed with interest the development of local writing movements, including original theatrical productions such as Jongsarat by non-profit organization Seeds, and the writing jams and Spoken Word events organized by indie publishers Heartwrite. When talking to people interested in these events, it seems to me that there is a general desire for literary and artistic community, but that there is also uncertainty about positioning oneself within a genealogy of Bruneian narrative-making. Faiq Airudin puts it excellently in his post about Bruneian Creative Industries and the tendency to “firstisms”; I hope this article will be of interest to Bruneian writers and readers interested in Bruneian literary history in English.

I leave it to someone much more informed than me to write something on Bruneian theatre and local productions (which I will obviously read with great interest).

Existing Bruneian literature in English

First, a look at the numbers. I’ve compiled what I think is a fairly comprehensive list of Bruneian literature in English (a version of this list first appeared earlier this year in the Springer chapter referenced above), although I strongly suspect that there are other works that I’m not aware of.

One of my motivations for writing this article for Open Brunei is to crowdsource information on Anglophone Bruneian literature – defined in this article as literature written primarily in English, and is about Brunei or by a Bruneian. I’m hoping that if any readers know of a text that fits the criteria, you’ll let me know so that we can build a comprehensive corpus of information.

(Open Brunei team adds: Kathrina says she can be contacted at kathrinadaud@gmail.com)

Some facts and figures

(Click the tabs below to browse the tables for Fiction, Drama, and Poetry)

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