The writings of Abdul Rahim Kajai: Malay nostalgia in a crystal.

Abdul Rahim Kajai (1894-1943), his life and his work, are discussed against the background of socio-cultural developments on the Malay Peninsula in the 1930s. A journalist, writer and author, Kajai played an important role in the emergence of notions of 'Malayness' which made Malays feel different from and hostile to the growing numbers of 'others' in the colony. In particular, his stories, splendid exercises in fragmentariness, suggest a strong nostalgia for the pastoral way of life, at variance with Kajai's own life in urban areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]