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Faking It in Kuala Lumpur
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October 14, 2009 |
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Peter Carey made a good choice when he set large parts of his novel My Life as a Fake in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. It's a city where not just some things, but most things, are not as they first appear. It seems dedicated to hard commerce, but pragmatic businessmen hire lion dancers to bring good fortune. It looks ultramodern but a traditional Malay village survives in the central business district. It appears divorced from nature, but rainstorms can paralyse it and pythons periodically pop up in new suburbs. And you think it has a single population, but it is really home to three distinct peoples and cultures.
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