Sharmini Aphrodite, the author of brand new book The Unrepentant, which takes readers through 14 magical, heartbreaking and beautiful stories connected to the Malayan (present day Malaysia and Singapore) Emergency, takes us through some of the work that has impacted her the most.

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy & Eyes of Zapata by Sandra Cisneros

I think I read Sandra Cisneros and Arundhati Roy when I was pretty young. I first read them at the age of 18 or something like that. So they have been pretty fundamental to me. Both of them discuss large, sweeping politics, but in very intimate ways.

With Arundhati Roy, she wrote The God of Small Things, which situates the large questions of caste, politics and decolonisation within the personal tragedy of a singular family.

With Sandra Cisneros, I’m thinking of this one particular story… as a whole, her writing, both her poetry and fiction has been very have been very influential. But there’s this one particular story that resonates strongly with me, Eyes of Zapata (from the collection Women Hollering Creek and Other Stories).

It’s set during the Mexican revolution about a woman who was the lover of the revolutionary Emiliano Zapata; I was also interested in how this huge, sweeping history was seen through their personal life.

Football In Sun and Shadow by Eduardo Galeano

He’s another writer who, although he works more with non-fiction, manages do the same thing, to encapsulate the grand drama of history within things like a singular anecdote or a story. I think his most famous remote work is Days and Nights of Love and War or Open Veins of Latin America.

But if you were to ask me, I think the one that resonates with me the most is his writing in Football in Sun and Shadow. He’s also a writer that I think is unabashedly romantic; he doesn’t try to be too clinical, so I find that very refreshing as well.

Our Fathers by Andrew O’Hagan

Another influence, closer to the UK, is the Scottish writer Andrew O’Hagan. He has this book called Our Fathers. I think he describes as the demise of the old Left in a Glaswegian town setting.

So once again, this story looks at a large sweep of politics where in this case, he encompasses [it] within a family drama, a generational drama, and what is particularly compelling to me is that he weaves faith into the story. So in this case, it’s Catholicism.

This is not only in the narrative and the content, like obvious things such as putting in hymn lyrics or talking about going to mass, but even in the particularity of his sentence structure, his syntax… that’s very evident.

Days of Being Wild (1990) by Wong Kar Wai 

Aesthetically speaking, I also love Wong Kar Wai films. Those help to set me in the mood of the period that I’m talking about; even though it’s a different place and a different setting, a lot of these cultural compatibilities spill over, o it helps.

My favourite is not In The Mood For Love (2000), which I do love a lot! Days of Being Wild: this movie is the one that has a part that’s actually set in the Philippines. I think it brings out very well that sense of tropical humidity [in South East Asia] even the color scale and grading, everything.

The Unrepentant by Sharmini Aphrodite

I think I wrote the first [story] time sometime in COVID, and the last one I think… I remember submitting the manuscript in 2022, so it would have been written over a period of two years.

I didn’t necessarily think when I was starting that this would form a collection. It was just based on things that interested me, and I suppose the time period as a whole was what interested me at the time. It was only afterwards that I was able to look back and see like, oh, I’ve got a bunch of stuff that is around the same time period, the same kind of questions and themes; and then it could be put together.

I do think that it is important that we delve and give time to these lesser explored histories.

I was also interested those [perspectives] that kind of slipped beneath the radar, like the idea of liberation theology, which most people would not think of in a Malaysian context… I was interested in exploring the emotional resonances of them.

The Unrepentant is out in November 2025.