The Snow in Kuala Lumpur (Paperback)

A tale of two men—fierce adversaries who ought to have been brothers—and two peoples, the Malays and Chinese, who forged a new nation while walking the thin line between kinship and a destructive rivalry

Malaysia in the 1960s. A newly independent nation, full of early promise. On the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, young Ah Tat dreams of a life beyond the kampong.
Earnest, bookish and a little naïve, he sees his path clearly: he will study hard at the Methodist school, enter university and one day become a man of consequence. It is his duty to guide his wayward cousin, the darkly charismatic KC, on a similar path to success. But when KC’s fascination with the local triads results in his sudden disappearance, Ah Tat is left with nothing but questions and regrets.
Years later, the estranged cousins are reunited in a much-changed country. Ah Tat, now a successful engineer and future captain of industry, discovers KC has become a powerful underworld ?gure. Vowing to haul his cousin back from the moral abyss, he is instead drawn into an escalating rivalry with KC as the two men vie for wealth, status, in?uence and the love of the enigmatic June Teh.
But could a bizarre weather event stay the inevitable reckoning?

Daryl Lim was born in Kuala Lumpur in 1984. He migrated to Sydney as a young child and grew up surreptitiously imbibing stories of his parents’ homeland. His writing has appeared in Peril Magazine, been short-listed for a Varuna House Fellowship and is a recipient of a Writing NSW Mentorship. He loves all kinds of fiction but novels like The Quiet American, On the Beach, The Sheltering Sky, or anything by Kazuo Ishiguro,Cormac McCarthy and Annie Proulx (among others) seem to be the ones that linger in his psyche. The Snow in Kuala Lumpur is his first novel. He currently lives in Sydney with his wife and son (in an apartmentrun by two sleepy cats).