Search

Tree of Sorrow is a fictional novel on the Perak-Malay Sultanate history by Malim Ghozali PK. This novel was published by Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP) on 2014 and was nominated for the 2016 International Literature Award, IMPAC Dublin. This novel portrays the 1874 Pangkor Treaty which lead to the intervention of British in the administration of Perak-Malay Sultanate. Tree of Sorrow indicates combination of inner and outside text. This combination confirms the existence of 'text within a text' or also known as dialog between text. Therefore, this article intends to seek answer to, what is the creative process and shape this novel has undergone since the subject is based on the 1874 Pangkor Treaty? Data from this article was collected through a qualitative research design. Library research was applied as the research instrument to analyse journal articles, books, thesis and newspapers. Intertextuality theory by Julia Kristeva was applied as the analysis framework. The findings of this study are that the Tree of Sorrow is a new text created based on an outside text, which is the 1874 Pangkor Treaty. The characters and the background in the new text has undergone transformation from hypotext to the hypertext. Expention was made to Sultan Abdullah's character as it was altered to a character named TC, while J.W.W. Birch was reffered to as Osborne. Transformation principles involves the presence of historical location of Naning and Penang Island, meanwhile modification involves the subjext of Perak Malay warrior from the original text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]