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Cultural Medallion #10
The Widower
Shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize 2016 for English Fiction
Former political detainee and professor Pak Karman loses his wife in a car accident. The intensity of his mourning starts to unhinge him. As reality, memory and fantasy become more and more blurred, he must come to terms with his past actions before his grief overwhelms him completely. Mohamed Latiff Mohamed’s novel, hailed as a landmark in modernist Malay fiction, is an unsettling tale of psychic disintegration and obsessive love.
Former political detainee and professor Pak Karman loses his wife in a car accident. The intensity of his mourning starts to unhinge him. As reality, memory and fantasy become more and more blurred, he must come to terms with his past actions before his grief overwhelms him completely. Mohamed Latiff Mohamed’s novel, hailed as a landmark in modernist Malay fiction, is an unsettling tale of psychic disintegration and obsessive love.
- GenresFiction
140 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
78 people want to read
About the author
Mohamed Latiff Mohamed
20 books3 followersMohamed Latiff Mohamed is one of the most prolific writers to come after the first generation of writers in the Singapore Malay literary scene. His many accolades include the Montblanc-NUS Centre for the Arts Literary Award (1998), the SEA Write award (2002), the Tun Seri Lanang Award (Malay Language Council of Singapore, Ministry of Information, Communication and Arts) (2003), the National Arts Council Special Recognition Award (2009), the Cultural Medallion (2013) and the Singapore Literature Prize in 2004, 2006 and 2008. His works revolve around the life and struggles of the Malay community in pre- and post-independence Singapore, and have been translated into Chinese, English, German and Korean.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
March 29, 2018
The Widower tells the story of Pak Karman (or Uncle Karman, Pak is a Malay honorific denoting respect for an elderly man). The base story is fairly straightforward.
The novel starts with Pak Karman in the cemetery, praying at his wife’s grave. He was a socialist activist in his youth and was detained for 15 years by the government for his political activities. His wife died in a car accident, and he spends the next few years praying daily at his wife’s grave as his grief at losing her slowly unhinges him. As the novel proceeds, however, it becomes less and less clear whether this is correct. Two alternative versions for his wife’s death are presented: she went missing in a stampede during the haj in Mecca; she died of an illness in the early years of their marriage.
The novel is less interesting for the story that it tells than for the evocation by language of a man slowly losing his mind:
The novel starts with Pak Karman in the cemetery, praying at his wife’s grave. He was a socialist activist in his youth and was detained for 15 years by the government for his political activities. His wife died in a car accident, and he spends the next few years praying daily at his wife’s grave as his grief at losing her slowly unhinges him. As the novel proceeds, however, it becomes less and less clear whether this is correct. Two alternative versions for his wife’s death are presented: she went missing in a stampede during the haj in Mecca; she died of an illness in the early years of their marriage.
The novel is less interesting for the story that it tells than for the evocation by language of a man slowly losing his mind:
Pak Karman sat directly in the middle of his wife’s grave. His outstretched legs touched his wife’s headstone. He opened his Quran and recited the Yasin verses of the thirty-sixth chapter, which establish the holy book as a divine source. His mellifluous voice, the lilting sound of his prayers and the utterance of his wife’s name transformed into a mass the size of a clear dewdrop, which entered his wife’s grave pit, then turned into a firefly, its yellow glow illuminating her face. His wife was desolate, he knew. She longed for him, yet she was resigned to her body merging with the soil…He looked at the sky. This time a pair of white doves, barely visible in the twilight, could be seen kissing while gliding through the air…. What pierced his nostrils was not any other smell but the scent of the red roses and frangipani at his wife’s grave. “This is the fragrance of my love for you.”This is relatively sedate, however, compared to what occurs towards the middle of the novel:
At his wife’s grave, he whispered that life was actually the most convincing excuse for death, that he no longer knew whether he was alive or undergoing the moments of his death. He heard a voice whispering in return: enter the shrine of repentance, enter the shrine of repentance, enter the shrine of repentance; read the Quran, read the Quran, read the Quran; enter the shrine of repentance, enter the shrine of repentance, enter the shrine of repentance. Seven yellow doves flew in a straight line towards the direction of Mecca, and then disappeared in the belly of the sky; and when he looked at the eastern horizon, he saw cascades of orange mixed with bright red in spots, with fragments swirling around the sky.His behaviour in public also rapidly deteriorates:
Three months back, all the newspapers in his country published news articles about him, condemning his eccentric behaviour and dredging up his activist past. Everyone denounced him. Everyone criticised him. Everyone detested him. The cause was simple: he had presented a paper at a conference, the contents sharply deviating from the wishes and desires of the people in his country. He insisted that he was only surfacing the truth. Many people claimed that his mind had become unhinged… With the loudspeaker he would trek the winding road towards the parliament building and scream lustily: “Democracy is dead, democracy lies at the feet of criminals, democracy is in the possession of the corrupt, democracy is a corpse, democracy is inside the grave, democracy lies alongside my dead wife, democracy is only for the rich, democracy is raping the poor.”The personal and the political become intertwined in his mind. This is an ingenious way of decrying the political situation as Pak Karman’s madness and inability to distinguish reality from hallucinations reflect the political madness of a country drowning in political lies, its people no longer able to distinguish truth from lies:
People scarcely mentioned how long he spent in detention… Supposedly, people said that the stories about him being detained were merely illusions. People said that the stories about him being imprisoned were sheer lies; those stories were his inventions to place himself on an equal level with other activists around the world. People said that he was not actually imprisoned by any authority. The saga of his imprisonment was purely an illusion inside him.”Whether Mohamed Latiff Mohamed is protesting Malaysian politics (and given the events of 1MDB, it certainly seems probable) or Singapore politics, this is a poetically political novel, and Mohamed Latiff Mohamed certainly deserved his Cultural Medallion award from the National Arts Council.
April 3, 2019
I know that this book is not immediately accessible because its form does not make for easy reading—a considerable amount of the novel is in stream of consciousness mode & also from a third person point of view. But the writing was often so beautiful. The protagonist, Pak Karman, is a former political detainee who mourns his wife to the point of madness, for 7 years. The grief for his wife is so severe that so many natural laws, it seems, are overturned. The flowers begin to converse with him, his wife’s voice comes from beyond the grave, he walks on his hands. The natural world around him debate about his sacrilegious grief that refuses to accept that his wife is no longer of the earth, arguing that their love transcends earthly love: “Droplets of rain were now speaking: ‘Love this pure cannot be separated by nature; there are no two different realms for a love so sacred.’”
He gets lost in internal philosophising about the nature of reality, existence and meaning. The book in fact begins during such a moment: “who is capable of destroying the train of one’s thoughts? I once placed the flesh of my thoughts on the surface of my wife’s lips, and once placed the pulse of my thoughts in the crevice of my wife’s thighs, she who is in the grave pit there, in the darkness, black and thick like ink. Sitting on the cold earth above my wife’s body, I now place my thoughts beside her.”
Often, he sees visions that seem like symbols, birds flying overhead in the direction of Mecca, doves. Or the grave site is suddenly filled with the scent of frangipani. His severe grief is only matched by his intense anger and scorn for the state of his community, as his mental state deteriorates, he intensifies his polemic, decrying their political, religious, and cultural apathy. It is up to you how you interpret what he says or whether you agree with him, but what is more interesting to me is why his grief for his dead wife runs parallel against this polemic. He is widowed of a wife, yes, but is he also widowed of something else? I don’t think his identity as a political detainee can be looked over in the novel at all. So glad this was translated. Please read.
He gets lost in internal philosophising about the nature of reality, existence and meaning. The book in fact begins during such a moment: “who is capable of destroying the train of one’s thoughts? I once placed the flesh of my thoughts on the surface of my wife’s lips, and once placed the pulse of my thoughts in the crevice of my wife’s thighs, she who is in the grave pit there, in the darkness, black and thick like ink. Sitting on the cold earth above my wife’s body, I now place my thoughts beside her.”
Often, he sees visions that seem like symbols, birds flying overhead in the direction of Mecca, doves. Or the grave site is suddenly filled with the scent of frangipani. His severe grief is only matched by his intense anger and scorn for the state of his community, as his mental state deteriorates, he intensifies his polemic, decrying their political, religious, and cultural apathy. It is up to you how you interpret what he says or whether you agree with him, but what is more interesting to me is why his grief for his dead wife runs parallel against this polemic. He is widowed of a wife, yes, but is he also widowed of something else? I don’t think his identity as a political detainee can be looked over in the novel at all. So glad this was translated. Please read.
November 19, 2017
This is a course text for a foundational Singaporean Literature module at the university I go to, but then again maybe all modules on Singaporean Literature are foundational, and we are in the midst of an important transitional period. I was told by a former student that this book was confusing for his cohort, and this piqued my interest. Having finished the book, I wonder what the source of confusion might have been for them. I have read structurally and stylistically confusing books that made it incredibly difficult to follow the narrative, but this was not one of those books. At some point, I did wonder if this was because the book included many references to the Malay culture, used Malay words, etc, and the cohort was predominantly Westernised Chinese, and were likely to be as alienated from their own Chinese culture as they were from the Malay. But isn’t that one of the purposes of literature and life? Not to seek out the comforts of the familiar, but to confront what is unfamiliar? And were death, mourning, and pain (some of the predominant concerns of the novel) not universal? But then again, “the cohort” is young, I am young...ish, and there is nothing wrong with not knowing entirely, and being confused about what we do not know. How many of us dare to weigh the pain and loss of Pak Karman and say we have measured it and understand it? This is also a novel that relies on the sense of smell a lot, specifically the smell of Frangipani and Rose, both of which are very significant scents, rich with meaning. Having had the good fortune to have taken a module in Asian Horror Film and explored Malaysian Horror Films and Tales quite a bit as an undergraduate, frangipani was familiar to me. Is The Widower a Malay ghost story, the same way Ning Choi-san and Nip Siu-Sin were in a Chinese ghost story? Does the ending of The Widower urge us to take the recommendation of the title and approach Pak Karman as a widower more than any other potentially incriminating and incendiary labels? Is The Widower about political, cultural, world weariness? Is the widower a misanthrope, a misogynist, a mad man, a pious Muslim, or a romantic? Couldn’t he be all of those things at the same time?
I really like this book, because it doesn’t do the job for you, it makes you do the job. And it doesn’t obscure with what I call fancy-pants words. It obscures by pointing out that the depths and nuances of emotion, pain, and beliefs are infinitely obscure and terrifyingly unknowable. But we don’t turn away from it or try to forget it or sweep it under the carpet with excuses that “this is how it is done”, “this is approaching it healthily”, “this is the way others do it”, “this is the only productive way of handling this”, “this is for the best”. We build a tent around it, and we encounter it, we converse with it.
I don’t profess to know this book, and truly, that’s not the goal of reading or learning or literature. So would love to know what interpretations and thoughts others have.
I really like this book, because it doesn’t do the job for you, it makes you do the job. And it doesn’t obscure with what I call fancy-pants words. It obscures by pointing out that the depths and nuances of emotion, pain, and beliefs are infinitely obscure and terrifyingly unknowable. But we don’t turn away from it or try to forget it or sweep it under the carpet with excuses that “this is how it is done”, “this is approaching it healthily”, “this is the way others do it”, “this is the only productive way of handling this”, “this is for the best”. We build a tent around it, and we encounter it, we converse with it.
I don’t profess to know this book, and truly, that’s not the goal of reading or learning or literature. So would love to know what interpretations and thoughts others have.
April 17, 2016
The emotion of a man coping with the lost of his love. Even as it is soporific, the extreme emotion of lost is well presented.
August 29, 2015
Novel read like a stream of consciousness as we were taken through the mind of a man unable to cope with the death of his wife. I was unsure if his wife died during a pilgrimage in Mecca, in an accident, or some place else. Was he really a political prisoner? Did he re-marry? Were his children with him or in Europe?
Lots of scenarios as reality and fantasy mesh and we feel his pain of loss, of being.
Yet, it was not just the pain of one man but also his lament about the breakdown of society -- of the integrity of political and religious leaders.
Or, am I reading too much into this slim novel. A novel of pain and loss.
Lots of scenarios as reality and fantasy mesh and we feel his pain of loss, of being.
Yet, it was not just the pain of one man but also his lament about the breakdown of society -- of the integrity of political and religious leaders.
Or, am I reading too much into this slim novel. A novel of pain and loss.
January 11, 2021
After the first 2 chapters, i realised that... I’m actually so puzzled by this book?? Like sometimes I feel like I got it & was on the same page as the protagonist but then he hits me with a poem-ish dialogue and i’m just like ??
I really hope the message/plot/purpose of the book was not lost in translation, maybe I need to read the original (which I plan to if I manage to get a copy of it)
Or maybe.. i just need to sit & brood over my thoughts for a little bit... btw I cried within the first 2 chapters hah hah no surprise there
I really hope the message/plot/purpose of the book was not lost in translation, maybe I need to read the original (which I plan to if I manage to get a copy of it)
Or maybe.. i just need to sit & brood over my thoughts for a little bit... btw I cried within the first 2 chapters hah hah no surprise there
November 10, 2025
"The Widower" is a landmark work in modernist Malay fiction. The novel centers on Pak Karman, a former political detainee and professor who loses his wife in a car accident. His profound grief triggers a psychological unravelling as reality, memory, and fantasy increasingly blur. The narrative delves deeply into themes of mourning, loss, and obsessive love, while also embedding a critique of contemporary society, specifically Singapore, in its portrayal of alienation and disillusionment.
Pak Karman's devotion to his deceased wife mirrors the unwavering loyalty she showed him during their youth, including through his seventeen years of political imprisonment. The novel explores his struggle to cope with her death, marked by nightly vigils at her grave and moments of surreal rebellion against reality. Pak Karman's experiences reveal broader social and political dissatisfaction without overtly naming specific institutions but making clear parallels to state and societal issues, including betrayal, isolation, and the failings of political leadership.
Additionally, familial themes emerge around Pak Karman’s daughters, who eventually leave Singapore to study and settle abroad, illustrating forms of personal and cultural abandonment. The novel also portrays Pak Karman’s idealism and commitment to rebellion as both poignant and futile, reflecting the tension between personal conviction and societal realities.
Mohamed Latiff Mohamed’s style is compact yet dense, weaving lyricism with moral realism. The narrative uses symbolic and sometimes surreal imagery to convey the protagonist’s psychic disintegration, making the novel both a psychological study and a broader social commentary. It stands as an emblematic work addressing the spiritual, psychological, and moral questions facing the Malay community and Singaporean society in the post-independence era. The novel exemplifies Mohamed Latiff Mohamed’s role as a masterful writer who builds literature that explores human conscience and the community’s spiritual and historical realities.
"The Widower" is a psychologically rich and socially engaged novel that explores grief and personal loss while serving as a reflection on political and cultural alienation, marking it as a key work in contemporary Malay literature.
Pak Karman's devotion to his deceased wife mirrors the unwavering loyalty she showed him during their youth, including through his seventeen years of political imprisonment. The novel explores his struggle to cope with her death, marked by nightly vigils at her grave and moments of surreal rebellion against reality. Pak Karman's experiences reveal broader social and political dissatisfaction without overtly naming specific institutions but making clear parallels to state and societal issues, including betrayal, isolation, and the failings of political leadership.
Additionally, familial themes emerge around Pak Karman’s daughters, who eventually leave Singapore to study and settle abroad, illustrating forms of personal and cultural abandonment. The novel also portrays Pak Karman’s idealism and commitment to rebellion as both poignant and futile, reflecting the tension between personal conviction and societal realities.
Mohamed Latiff Mohamed’s style is compact yet dense, weaving lyricism with moral realism. The narrative uses symbolic and sometimes surreal imagery to convey the protagonist’s psychic disintegration, making the novel both a psychological study and a broader social commentary. It stands as an emblematic work addressing the spiritual, psychological, and moral questions facing the Malay community and Singaporean society in the post-independence era. The novel exemplifies Mohamed Latiff Mohamed’s role as a masterful writer who builds literature that explores human conscience and the community’s spiritual and historical realities.
"The Widower" is a psychologically rich and socially engaged novel that explores grief and personal loss while serving as a reflection on political and cultural alienation, marking it as a key work in contemporary Malay literature.
August 4, 2024
"Go back, my dear, I am already in another realm. Go home, my love, we will meet again in prolonged dreams without end. Don't carry yourself like this forever. Don't reject the meaning of fate. Our love is still intact. We are only inhabiting separate realms." - The Widower by Mohamed Latiff Mohamed, Translated by Alfian Sa'at
A story of grief and longing, this was a sublime piece of writing that translates the emptiness of the person left behind by a dying loved one. Raw and emotional, it stuns and enthralls the reader from start to finish.
Former political detainee and Professor Pak Karman is in disbelief, grief and anger over his wife's death and the events that follow. Everything seems to be blurred, a mindless chaos as his mourning and obsessive love for his wife leads to his disorientation. Seemingly untethered from reality, his past and present seem to converge, and Pak Karman has trouble trying to separate his dreams from reality.
This is a compelling story of a man whose obsessive love for his wife is also mirrored in his constant thirst for justice. His political ambitions and passionate love shows a man who is close to falling apart as he grieves for his wife. The constant stream of consciousness, and the powerful imagery of the surroundings of the cemetery lends a vivid portrayal of Pak Karman's intense mourning for his deceased wife. In addition, the bits of social commentary on the religious fatwa also shows the true nature of Pak Karman and his intensity in every juncture of his life.
Beautifully written, poetic in its nature and visceral in its imagery, this is a story that you would not soon forget. Unsettling yet compelling, it is a wonderful story of obsessive love, rebellion, and grief.
A story of grief and longing, this was a sublime piece of writing that translates the emptiness of the person left behind by a dying loved one. Raw and emotional, it stuns and enthralls the reader from start to finish.
Former political detainee and Professor Pak Karman is in disbelief, grief and anger over his wife's death and the events that follow. Everything seems to be blurred, a mindless chaos as his mourning and obsessive love for his wife leads to his disorientation. Seemingly untethered from reality, his past and present seem to converge, and Pak Karman has trouble trying to separate his dreams from reality.
This is a compelling story of a man whose obsessive love for his wife is also mirrored in his constant thirst for justice. His political ambitions and passionate love shows a man who is close to falling apart as he grieves for his wife. The constant stream of consciousness, and the powerful imagery of the surroundings of the cemetery lends a vivid portrayal of Pak Karman's intense mourning for his deceased wife. In addition, the bits of social commentary on the religious fatwa also shows the true nature of Pak Karman and his intensity in every juncture of his life.
Beautifully written, poetic in its nature and visceral in its imagery, this is a story that you would not soon forget. Unsettling yet compelling, it is a wonderful story of obsessive love, rebellion, and grief.
February 11, 2024
My most generous assessment is that the beauty of book is quite literally lost in translation. I tried to enjoy this book but mostly found myself unable to sympathise with his grief and descent into madness and almost DNF. Putting aside the translation which I did consider to be wanting, the unreliability of the narrator, his jumbled memories, the ‘stream of consciousness’ style narration, his ruminations on death love spirituality godliness ‘perjuangan’ sacrifice race - lost in the messiness of quranic verses, conversations with roses, the smell of frangipani and symbolic doves. Not for me, or I picked this up at a time unsuitable for me.
December 15, 2025
A difficult read. I am sure there's some deeper layers I have missed, as in, is the descent into madness of our unreliable narrator a reflection of Singaporean politics? Yet, while at times poetic, there was also an awful lot of repetition, and at the end, I cringed when the smell of frangipani and roses was mentioned for the millionth time. Not for me, or not at the right time.
October 10, 2024
Must read this book at the right time. The translation is very well done. I’m wondering if it read the same in Bahasa.
December 7, 2021
“This novel marks a significant milestone in the development of the contemporary Malay novel.”
—Dewan Sastera (Malaysia)
—Dewan Sastera (Malaysia)
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews