Book Review : No Intention to Kill : A True Story By T. Vijayandran

No Intention to Kill : A True Story by T. Vijayandran was officially launched on Sunday, 1st June, 2008 in Petaling Jaya by YB Karpal Singh, Advocate and Solicitor, Member of Parliament Malaysia. I had the privilege of attending the launch as an old friend of the author and to witness and share in Vijayandran’s joyous achievement of completing the task of writing the book within 3 months, as mentioned at the launch and seeing its fruition.

This is an easy book to read, even though it is set in legal intricacies, simply because it is based on a true case handled by T. Vijayandran. His role as the defense lawyer in the case has made the narrative very personal and interesting and the story teller side of the author is evident in his style.

The book is about HerlinaTrisnawati, a young 18 year old Indonesian woman from Surabaya, who seeks employment in Malaysia as a domestic maid. She arrives in Malaysia with great hope of finding a good employer and a dream for a better future. Fate however deals a cruel hand when she finds herself subject to reprimands. Within three months of her arrival in Malaysia, her dreams were shattered by an act beyond her control, the darkest hour of her life, that is the unpremeditated murder of her employer.

As her defense lawyer, the author takes you through what transpires behind the court scenes, the anguish and trauma of the accused who finds herself at the mercy of a judicial system totally alien to her. We also see the compassion and emotional attachment that springs from the whole 7 year legal battle and the spiritual side of human interactions throughout the book.

This would be especially good reading for law students who will benefit from it as the book can provide a real life guide on the legal maneuvers taken by a defense lawyer to save the life of a client from the gallows. Law students may also look forward to meeting with the author at a guest author session planned for in the month of January 2008.

The book also provides some highly humorous anecdotes, true to the character of the author and I recall a good chuckle at the author’s narration of his visit to the morgue, in his search of a forensic expert. For more on the book and the author, check out nointentiontokill.blogspot.com. The book is currently available at Tan Sri Loy Hean Heong Library, Main Campus, Call No. 345.595 VIJ

About the author:
T. Vijayandran is a lawyer by profession and has been in private practice since 1990. This is Vijayandran’s first attempt at writing a book and for that he has received praise for his work from the Malaysian legal fraternity. He was born and raised in Kuala Lumpur, attended primary and secondary school at the Bukit Bintang Boys School, went on to graduate in Sociology from the University of Science in Penang and landed his first job as Superintendent of Customs at the Royal Malaysian Customs and Excise Department, where he learnt how to prosecute cases related to smuggling offences. He then proceeded to read law at the University of Buckingham, UK.

Reviewed by Sossamma George, Tan Sri Loy Hean Heong Library, Main Campus.

Smiling Moon

The smiling moon appeared on the night of December 1st 2008. The phenomenon happens every 48 years. The planet Jupiter and Venus and a crescent moon formed a smiley face that night, with the planets forming the eyes and the moon forming the mouth. Venus and Jupiter have appeared side by side in the evening sky over the last week or so and on December 1st, the ’face’ appeared.

Some people say Venus, Jupiter and the crescent moon come together to send a message of happiness to Earth. In the United States however, the effect will be inverted and will appear as a frown.

You can watch the image at YouTube by clicking this link,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74XHmZZzlug

Favourite Library Staff 2008

Here are the winners for the Favourite Library Staff Polls. We have 25 winners in the respective categories.

Category	Main Campus Library	Subang Square Library	Leisure Commerce Square Library
The funniest	Khirudin	Mazlly	Carolineson Malathy
The most helpful	Stella	Azura	Ayu
The quietest	Suseela	Mas	Shuhada
The most hardworking	Meena	Chon Ling	Suan Kui
The best dressed	Susan	Ana	Shuhada
The most serious	Radtha	Patrick	Fadilah
The best smile	Arief	Yan Ping	Zatul
The most creative	Komathi	Jaspal	Suan Kui

Book Review - The Zahir by Paulo Coelho

Rating:

According to the writer Jorge Luis Borges, the meaning of ‘zahir’ comes from Islamic tradition and is thought to have arisen at some point in the eighteenth century. ‘Zahir’ in Arabic means visible, present, incapable of going unnoticed. It is someone or something which, once we have come into contact with them or it, gradually occupies our every thought, until we can think of nothing else. This can be considered either a state of hollowness or of madness.

This story is about love, losing and passionate obsession. It is about the famous writer searching for his wife, Esther, a war correspondent who just returned from Iraq. Esther has left him for no apparent reason. The police began their investigation and various theories was put forward such as kidnapping or she left his husband for another man or she was simply bored with the marriage. Before his wife goes missing, the writer and his wife went on a pilgrimage in Santiago. Esther was his backbone as a writer. During the journey to Santiago, Esther helped his husband to discover what he really wants to be, a musician or a writer.

Their life is happy but one day the husband lover Marie came forward with a true alibi. The husband also seek out Mikhail, Esther lover who lives in Kazakhstan. Esther always mention to her husband about Mikhail, saying that he is very important to her life.

Then the writer decided to find her wife and the truth of his own life. He went all around the world from South America to Spain, France, Croatia and eventually arrived at the bleakly beautiful landscape of Central Asia. From one country to other country he started to understand the nature of love and the power of destiny.

Whether he found his wife or not, the reader has to read this book because at the end of the story, the readers are able to feel the various meaning of love and life. A brilliant thought that quotes that meaning is “Things which are important in our life never go away from us. All those things that went away from us are the ones that only we thought were important, but were actually not.”

This book is available at all Taylor’s libraries and the call number is F COE.

About the Author:
Paulo Coelho was born in Brazil and has become one of the most widely read authors in the world today. Renowned for his best-loved work, The Alchemist, he has sold more than 56 million books worldwide and his work have been translated into 56 languages. The recipient of numerous prestigious international awards, amongst them the Crystal Award by the World Economic Forum and France`s Legion d`Honneur, Paulo Coelho is a writer to inspire nations. He was inducted into the Brazilian Academy of Letter in 2002.

Reviewed by Assistant Librarian, Nur Azura Tajudin