QUERY/ A PLACE TO BE

Dear ,
I am seeking representation. My novel, A Place to Be, is a piece of literary fiction (95 271 words) that can be compared to the lyrical yet plot-driven novels by Preeta Samarasan and Arundhati Roy. However, the introspective and psychological bent of my novel makes it more emotionally and psychically gripping.
Kamala Karthigesu has been spending the last two years in a mental asylum in Tanjung Agas, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia. She is just about to hang herself when there is a knock on the door. She’s not even allowed to kill herself, it seems.
Her days at the Asylum have mainly been quiet apart from occasional episodes which have come to be regarded by all as “1000 watt” moments. But the past will not let her go. She’s haunted by Pei Lu and Rashid, her childhood friends who betrayed her by falling in love, Tarikh, Rashid’s dead artist uncle whose paintings first inspired her to become an artist, her ex-lover the English painter Vincent Garland and Vairaumati, a character from Paul Gauguin’s paintings whose persona she blames Vincent for imposing on her when they were in love.
It is finally Nurse Fatimah who saves her from suicide. She has been taking care of Kamala at the asylum but their relationship has always been an uneasy one. It is Nurse Fatimah’s confession about her own past that finally gets Kamala to face the ghosts that have been haunting her. But it’s not an easy confrontation. She learns a fact about her past which confirms her mental instability and she is left to wonder about what she will do with her guilt.
Set mainly in contemporary Malaysia and partly in England, the novel looks at the effects of flawed communication between people, the weight of an unexplored past (both private and public- a parallel concern that runs through the novel is the May 13 1969 racial riots in Kuala Lumpur), the power of betrayal and how people create their own victimhood.
My poems have been published in several US and UK publications including “Agenda” Broadsheet and The Wolf magazine. I am a Malaysian by birth, a painter by choice and a writer by necessity.
Please let me know if you would be interested in reading part or all of A Place to Be.
Thanks for your time and I hope to hear from you soon.