Ted Mahsun

Lat's Town Boy , my favourite Lat book ever, has now been launched in the US , following what I can only assume is the successful launch of its prequel, Kampung Boy . While Kampung Boy is fun and all, I am more attached to Town Boy because it takes place in Sungai Rokam (where I went to primary school) and Ipoh (where Lat went to secondary school). Sungai Rokam was (and still is, actually) a Malay housing estate developed in the '60s on the outskirts of Ipoh. I hope those Americans enjoy it; they seemed to have liked Kampung Boy quite a bit. That's all very well. Lat's books are probably some of the very, very few things from this nation we can truly be proud of.

There seems to be quite a fuss being kicked up in the UK over Tintin in t he Congo portraying blacks in an unflattering light : A Commission for Racial Equality spokeswoman said: "This book contains imagery and words of hideous racial prejudice, where the 'savage natives' look like monkeys and talk like imbeciles. "How and why do Borders think that it's okay to peddle such racist material? "Yes, it was written a long time ago, but this certainly does not make it acceptable. This is potentially highly offensive to a great number of people. "It beggars belief that in this day and age Borders would think it acceptable to sell and display Tintin in the Congo ." What I'm wondering is... why kick up a row now? Tintin in the Congo isn't a recent publication. It was first published in 1930s for god's sake! A lot of materials at the time had racist contents. Tintin in the Congo was just a reflection of the zeitgeist of that era. And why all th...