By Rosmini Shaari
Format: Paperback, 333 pages. Category: Fiction. ISBN 978-988-18419-2-7
OUT OF PRINT
Set in Kuala Lumpur, The Wife is an acclaimed exploration of a marriage by one of Malaysia’s leading women writers, Rosmini Shaari. The novel introduces three very different professional women who each have to reconcile the contradictions of modernity and traditional Islamic conceptions of a woman’s role. Rosmini Shaari draws heavily on her own experiences in this very personal novel.
‘A story of a tragic love triangle, full of emotion that pleads the sympathy of the readers.’
ITBM. Malaysia
Sofia, a savvy, college- educated woman with modern sensibilities, now plays the role of the traditional Muslim wife to womaniser Halim. In a dramatic opening scene, she confronts her husband’s young mistress, Nora, and realizes that the life she had imagined is nothing but a fantasy. Faced with the threat of polygamy, can Sofia recapture her husband’s affection once again, or should she rebel?
Wati is the brilliant career woman whose high-powered job leaves her little time to support her husband’s political ambitions. When she intervenes to try and save Sofia’s marriage, she unexpectedly finds herself the victim…
On the one hand Wati and Sofia have been brought up to believe that marriage is for life. On the other hand, they struggle to figure out how to free their desire from the constraints of tradition.
‘Marriage and work often proves to be a stumbling block to complete female emancipation, as attested to devastating effect in Rosmini Shaari’s’The Wife.
– Malay Woman blog