Not afraid of fighting talk

'THE HARDEST SCENES for me to write about are the tender scenes, because I find it really easy to write about violence. I mean, if there is an abduction scene I am there!' So says Rani Manicka, one of the hottest new names in Asian literature whose debut novel, The Rice Mother, looks at the Japanese occupation of Malaysia.

All sparkling eyes and luxuriant hair, the 39-year-old, who lives in the serene southern English town of Egham, in Surrey, cannot explain her knack for capturing cruelty. She claims she is not violent at all.

But she has triggered a media feeding frenzy. Posters advertising The Rice Mother (Hodder $145) are plastered all over London, with a quote from no less an authority than Glamour magazine, which ranked her book in the same league as Memoirs Of A Geisha. The Times has praised its 'genuine intimacy and passionate involvement'.

As for the advance, 'I got GBP300,000 [HK$3.64 million],' Manicka freely divulges, then breathlessly recounts that she was expecting about GBP20,000 - slightly more than her agent had won for the last book he sold, which was about cats.

'And so,' Manicka says, 'when he phoned me and asked if I was sitting down, I thought, 'Oh my god', because that's what people say when they have bad news for you.' When he revealed the figure, her reaction was: 'Oh wow, I am big now.'

Her 468-page blockbuster hinges on the life of the titular heroine who is based on Manicka's grandmother. A wonderfully capable individual, she could turn her hand to anything from gardening to baking with aplomb. She invested in property so shrewdly that, when she died, Manicka's aunt did not need to work for the rest of her life.