Author Event: James Chai (POSTPONED)

We regret to announce that our scheduled event with James Chai on 13 January 2024 has been postponed until later on in the year. The postponement is due to an issue with book logistics, which means that we won’t be able to get his books in time for the event. As such, we decided, together with James, that the event should be rescheduled. A new date has not yet been set but we will announce it in due course.

We would like to apologise for the inconvenience and hope that you will continue to support our events. Please feel free to get in touch with us if you need further clarification or information.

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Come listen to James Chai, author of Sang Kancil,  talk about his selection of the luminary Malaysians who made it into his book, how he distilled lessons from their examples, and what this may mean for the future of Malaysia on Saturday 13 Jan 2024, 8pm. There will be an audience Q&A as well as a book signing on the evening. Please purchase your tickets early as spaces are limited. Tickets are RM10 and you will receive a RM10 voucher to use on event day.

Ordinary is not as ordinary as you think. History is written by the loudest and most charismatic victors, but are silent about the true movers and shakers: the rebels, the honest servants, the quiet doers, the square pegs in a round hole, and the ordinary believers who kept showing up.

Through seven moving tales of courage, prolific Malaysian writer James Chai shows us in his debut book how:

– A frail 70-year-old woman became the face of Malaysia’s largest protest that helped overturn the longest-ruling regime in the world;
– A mother-of-two fought through gender and racial unfairness and became the first Asian woman to win the ‘Nobel Prize for Cancer Research’;
– A middle-aged, middle-level government servant exposed the largest white-collar crime in the world;
– A punk graphic artist persevered through multiple arrests and drew one of the most recognisable activist artworks in the region;
– An indigenous retiree battled powerful governments and corporations to usher in one of the largest environmental victories in Southeast Asia;
– A group of leaderless Sikh organisation saved the lives of thousands in the worst flood in modern Malaysian history; and
– A suburban bottom-of-class student found his way through modern history’s bloodiest wars and won the Pulitzer Prize.

Sang Kancil will force us to reassess what is truly important and remind us of what we are capable of. Filled with research-backed theories, this book is a call-to-action for the underdogs battling our own giants.

About the Author:
James Chai is the author of Sang Kancil: A Tale about How Ordinary Malaysians Defied the Odds. His work as a columnist and researcher has appeared on TIME, Bloomberg, CNN, SCMP and CNA. James holds a postgraduate and undergraduate degree from Oxford University and Queen Mary University.