New Novel | The Last Days

Now available in all major bookshops, Lit Books and as an ebook.

Three years after Kings of Petaling Street, I am happy to announce that my second novel, The Last Days, will be published by Clarity in February 2020!

It is 1981. An aging Communist revolutionary arrives in the hazy heart of Kuala Lumpur while the country lurches towards a political turning point. A woman known only as H begins telling the fugitive’s story. But her dangerous task is complicated by the fact that by telling his story, she is diving deep into her own complicated past and her family’s own complicity in the violent days of the Emergency. As a silent assassin closes in, their lives become steadily intertwined as Malaysia’s own history—and future—becomes unrecognisable.

"The Last Days . . . serves up a fascinating examination of history and memory, and explores how stories disappear and (later) become realigned in unexpected and shattering ways." Terence Toh, The Star

"A lot is made about the divide between high literature and genre literature, and . . . books like these cross that so effortlessly. (Tham) writes in the best of genre traditions. It keeps you turning the pages, it keeps you wanting to know what happens next." Lee Chwi Lynn and Sharmilla Ganesan, BFM's "By the Book" podcast

". . . (Tham's) novel was a refreshing dive into the time of the Malayan Emergency through the story's frame of 1981 Kuala Lumpur." Melissa de Silva, author of 'Others' is not a Race