Bought in a hotly contested auction in the UK, The Rice Mother, a first novel, has now been sold in thirteen countries. The story begins with Lakshmi, the rice mother, born in Ceylon in 1916. At fourteen she finds herself in Malaya, married to a quiet man whose wedding Rolex was borrowed and who has a line of debtors queuing up to see him every week. With an unbending resolve she improves their lot and by the time she is nineteen has six children. Just as things are beginning to get better the Japanese invade. As her husband slowly recovers from the horrendous torture he suffered at their hands their beautiful green-eyed daughter, Mohini, is taken away and never returns.

Over the course of the book Lakshmi, her husband, their children and partners, the grandchildren and great-granddaughter offer the story of their lives and, where the stories overlap, their version of them.

Their stories are of war, death, betrayal, degradation, opium addiction, gambling and the fight between tradition and modernity. Superstition, destiny, ghosts and gods stalk them. The stories have been collected by the granddaughter, Dimple and are later discovered by her daughter, Nisha. They reveal a pain and tenderness that the characters felt unable to share with each other. In understanding the stories of her ancestors there is hope that the tragic legacy that began with Mohini's disappearance will end.

ABOUT RANI MANICKA

Rani Manicka grew up in Malaysia. She studied in Germany where she met an Italian and moved to England. She currently divides her time between Malaysia and England. This is her first novel.

'When I was young we lived in a very big stone house on the edges of the Malaysian East Coast. Outside my window lay a glorious world of white beaches where turtles came to lay their eggs, swaying palms and cool salt flavoured breezes. My brother and I hunted grasshoppers in the tall grass to feed the poor baby birds that fell out of their nests. Armed with sticks we were careful of the grasses that danced for they moved to the beautiful songs snakes sing. When evening came we went with our Malay servant, Badom to greet the returning fisherman. Their enduring mahogany and leather hands filled our basket with Selat kuning, my father's favourite fish. When the moon hung huge and beautiful in the night sky, my mother took us walking along the beach and the restless waves nearly came to touch our bare feet. But never did we swim all the while that we lived next door to the sea, remembering Badom's warning words, 'the ocean is a spirit unpredictable and forever hungry for the unwary.'

At a certain age I was sent to school but I learned only to be the bane of every teacher with the misfortune to cross my path and they blinked with surprise as lady luck smiled kindly on my exam results. After my finals I was sent by the University student body, AIESEC, to Germany for management training. I was a useless trainee, more interested in the perpetual party the students held. In London I married an Italian and went into the restaurant business. The marriage failed and business bored me.

It first occurred to me to write when I read a scene from Anita Brookner's book, in which a writer of romantic fiction is lunching with her agent. Without any semblance of greed she ate a piece of fish as her kindly agent watched and for some inexplicable reason I was captivated by them, their irreproachable virtue and their gentle world. A far cry from the restaurant trade where nearly everyone waits to rip you off.

My plot appeared when a gorgeous blonde came into the restaurant early one evening, furious. She sat attacking the buttons on her mobile telephone. It turned out that it was her boyfriend's mobile and that he was faithless to an astonishing degree. Having stolen his phone she was announcing her existence to all the 'others.' Amazed that someone would expand so much energy on so pointless a cause I decided she had done revenge an injustice. Once home I gave her a pencil sharp brain, taught her the art of cruelty and dropped her into a situation. Then I sat back and watched what she could be persuaded to execute. 'The Devil in the Bread' was born. It still sits, silently fuming in my computer. Too nasty to be published.

That was when I thought of my poor old grandmother, dead but surely a story waiting to tell. A rice mother. When I was young I used to visit her during the school holidays. Already defeated, she sat half-hidden by the front door of her tiny wooden house, in a chair, its seat and back made of blue and white woven rubber, watching the world go by. Often I had looked into her sad eyes and wondered what the tiger must have looked like when it had all its teeth. So I returned her to a time where her spirit could be fierce and wonderful again. Only three of her five children still survive today and though they are yet to read my book they know it is only a tribute to a much admired woman and not a true life account.'

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