About The Author

Kam Raslan is a writer and director, working in film, TV and theatre in Malaysia. He is a columnist in The Edge weekly and Off the Edge magazine. His writings were previously compiled in Generation: A Collection of Contemporary Malaysian Ideas. He also writes for the Instant Cafe Theatre and will one day make his own feature film.

Confessions of an Old Boy: The Dato' Hamid Adventures is Kam's first book and is available at major bookstores in Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei, and is also available online at Amazon.com

If you wish to contact Kam Raslan, email to:
kam at kamraslan dot com.

Confessions of an Old Boy: The Dato' Hamid Adventures

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Confessions of an Old Boy:
The Dato' Hamid Adventures

Dato' Hamid—The Old Boy and civil servant who's been everywhere and seen it all (even though he never wanted to). Here he 'spills the beans' on his adventures dating back to the 1940s, from Kuala Lumpur to Monte Carlo, Los Angeles to Algiers, London to Temerloh Rest House and much more. Along the way Dato' Hamid tussles with a beautiful seductress-cum-diamond thief; is corrupted by a ruthlessly ambitious banker; and helps solve the murder of a billionaire businessman. And all the time he wishes he were back at home tending his orchids and nursing his favourite cognac.

Shameless, exciting and funny, Dato' Hamid's life and adventures chart the financial, political and amorous relationships that have made Malaysia what it is today.

You'll never meet anyone quite like Dato' Hamid, but you'll know him.

Reviews

When I read the first of the Dato' stories, I fell off my massage chair laughing. I actually believed that the Dato' was a real Malaysian. Please don't circulate this book among your friends. Ask them to get their own copies. This is possibly the funniest thing you will read before the next parliamentary session starts."
— Patrick Teoh
Actor, columnist and blogger
Briskly and brightly, the author writes of an elite, worldly milieu which was instrumental for a brief post-independence period before being made redundant by the brash new leadership of the 80s. The voices, the situations are written with such impeccable authenticity and wit that the narrative comes alive with an affecting anomaly—nostalgia which is whip-smart, urbane and clear-eyed, unlike anything else written about our recent past."
— Jit Murad
Actor and writer
Kam draws the reader straight into his tale—just as a well-crafted film instantly immerses us in the action and the atmosphere. The naturalism that Kam has achieved in his story-telling grants us a privileged glimpse of a world within a world—that of the upper-class Malay in the context of post-colonial Malaya's rapid evolution into the multi-layered complexity of a multi-cultural, multi-racial Malaysian nation."
—Antares
Arts and social commentator
As an Old Boy of MCKK [the Malay College of Kuala Kangsar], I was so convinced that Dato' Abdul Hamid bin Dato' Sidek was indeed my school senior. Then one day I was told that Dato' Hamid was the creation of Kam Raslan. I was dumbfounded. How could Kam Raslan create such an illusion and I fall for it. Until today I am not willing to accept Dato' Hamid as a fictional character. To me Dato' Hamid is the missing link between secular Malaysia and the born again Malay Muslim of today's Malaysia"
—Hishamuddin Rais
Writer, film-maker and cultural activist
If there's one pivotal character in this country's history that it has forgotten or tried to forget, it's the Anglophile Malay man. Dato' Hamid's story is redolent of the salad days of a Malaya, alas, now gone cynical. Disarmingly honest (and very funnily so), and even touching and wise, it's certainly got our readers excited to meet the man. The Malaysiana genre finds its hero, and about time too."
—Jason Tan
Editor, "Off the Edge" magazine

Kam Raslan's Confessions of an Old Boy: The Dato' Hamid Adventures (ISBN 978 983 3445 00 4) was first serialized in Off the Edge magazine and is published by Marshall Cavendish Editions, an imprint of Marshall Cavendish International.