Novel
Hikayat Percintaan Kasih Kemudaan
Not translated into English
Ahmad Kotot · 1927
Synopsis
The youthful loves of Yazid and Zamrud, as the book's second title announces, on the Malay peninsula of the twenties, where families still decide marriages. A preface by the author states his intention; letters exchanged between the two young people and a song of their first rendezvous punctuate a story told in the manner of the old Malay tales, whose name and turns of phrase the book retains.
Context
The text was probably begun in 1925 or 1926, when its author was finishing his post at Batu Talam or starting the one at Kuantan. It appeared in Seremban, from Al-Matba'ah al-Rawdhah al-Islam wa Syarikah, in a thousand copies and in two parts, one hundred pages in 1927 and one hundred and sixty-nine in 1928, in Arabic script. It is the only novel its author published. An edition in Latin characters appeared in 1975 from the national language institute, with the original preface and an introduction by A. Bakar Hamid.
Who it is for
A short sentimental novel, in Malay, written for young readers of the twenties and readable without knowing anything of the beginnings of the Malay novel.
Prizes and reception
Ranked among the very first Malay novels of the peninsula, in the wake of Hikayat Faridah Hanom; it owes its survival only to its 1975 reissue.