F

You first went to university on a dance scholarship. How did you end up writing?

M

I was always writing, but I was always dancing, too. At some point I made the decision to leave my dance degree and to focus on literature, and to try to imagine and create in a different way.

F

On first impression, your intimate storytelling style makes your work memorable. Did you initially want to write with this style?

M

I’m so happy to hear this, thank you. “Do Not Say We Have Nothing” is a big novel, an epic, but I wanted the reader to feel as if this was their own life, their own family, their own aspirations. I don’t know if I think about style per se, but I think about language and selfhood, how we speak, or learn to speak, and how our words come under pressure as the political climate changes — in times of oppression or totalitarianism, and in times of freedom, too. When I’m working on a novel, it’s really a kind of listening. I’m just trying to hear something that is already in the world.

F

How far removed is your first piece of writing to what you are doing now?

M

I think it’s quite far removed. I’ve often hoped that I could leave myself behind through writing and imagining, and that books are a way to steal away from oneself! It’s an illusion that I seem to need in my life.

F

There are some implications of Asian writers who write about and within Asia. How impactful are these factors for your creative process?

M

I’m not sure. I think most characters live on the page through their complexity. I approach them as I approach myself, not as a category of person (Asian) but just as a person. The world they know is part of them, but the world is changing and in flux. That’s how I see them, as solid and complex and alive and real (they want to make music, they love or fail to love, they are driven to forget or to reinvent themselves) but also like a river.

F

You’re based in Montreal, but born to a Malaysian Chinese father and a Hong Kong Chinese mother. Each country in Asia has their own language. Do you think writing in English helps you translate your thoughts better?

M

It’s my only language, unfortunately, as my parents raised us almost entirely in English. I speak a bit of Cantonese, Mandarin, French, and Dutch, but the only language in which I’m completely fluent in is English. I do sometimes think that I might be translating worlds or ways of seeing into the English language, but it feels so natural to me that I can’t untie it from the function of language itself.

F

Your books “Dogs on the Perimeter” and “Do Not Say We Have Nothing” have traumatic national histories as settings. What made you choose these as the backdrops for your books?

M

I think the subject was revolution, idealism, and how we live or try to live as the worlds we know are collapsing or transforming. Cambodia is a place I became very attached to, and where I spent months and months over many years. And then, after writing “Dogs at the Perimeter,” many difficult questions remained unresolved for me, and these gave rise to “Do Not Say We Have Nothing.”

Your question is a fascinating one, as it makes me think that some of the most profound desires of the 20th century – what we wanted for our societies, and what we imagined they might be – became traumatic national histories. Belief, unbending and unforgiving, fueled ideology, and idealism embraced violence. Righteousness in all its forms frightens me; more and more I suspect one needs humility to truly change the world.

F

You incorporate classical music like Bach and Prokofiev in “Do Not Say We Have Nothing.” Does your encounter with the classics influence your stories to have distinctive buildup and complexity?

M

The three characters at the centre of “Do Not Say We Have Nothing” are musicians, and so we see the world through them, their senses, their obsessions and questions. Sparrow, for instance, loves Bach, and the pattern of Bach’s thinking is part of the pattern of his own. I think this becomes part of the structure of the novel, its themes and variations and recurrences, along with Bach’s particular mix of technical precision with ardour, spirituality and something completely indefinable. I hope so.

F

There’s an intimacy in words that can capture complexity better than visuals – and your work uses this technique to discuss the freedom of expression. As a writer, looking at regressive situations that occur everywhere, does literature make you feel hopeful?

M

No, I wish I could say that it does. But I don’t think I turn to literature for hope. I think I need it because it has contradictions, and because the most profound literature can never be pinned down. I can’t put my finger on exactly what it says or does because it’s never really at rest, it has so many surfaces and interiorities and ways of thinking, that it is continuously refracting against our changing world. That’s how I want to think and live.

F

Translation in literature is sometimes tricky because it might not eloquently convey the story, and your books have been translated into more than 25 languages. What do you think about this issue? Have you checked or met any issues regarding the translations?

M

Each language is another conceptual space, so that is part of the art of translation, how to carry a work from one space into another. I feel the translations have to find their own way. Translators are heroes. They lend their skills and their artistry to other books and artists.

F

Are there any new books or exciting projects coming from you?

M

I’m working on a novel, but very slowly. Mostly I’ve been traveling this year, so giving in to movement and change! And trying to absorb as much as possible.