Bernice Chauly’s debut novel, Once We Were There, combines the personal and political in a defiant, uncompromising way. This is a coming-of-age novel that is also about a specific moment in the history of Malaysia, and a love letter to its capital city at the muddy confluence, Kuala Lumpur. A novel that has a woman as its central character, that takes as its primary concern the period of “Reformasi” politics in 1998 and its immediate aftermath, and weaves into the narrative the events in a young woman’s life within this milieu: sex, drugs, a journalism career, marriage, motherhood, and the loss of a child.
Chauly is a significant name within the local literary scene; not only has she published collections of poetry, short stories, and a memoir, she is also a photographer, actor, filmmaker, and is the festival director of the George Town Literary Festival as well as a teacher of creative writing at the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus.
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