Literary culture in ... Malaysia

Usually I'm reluctant to generalis [sic] my experience but in this case, I'm pretty sure that my ignorance of our national literature is shared by most of my peers, and perhaps Malaysians in general.

We read short stories and trimmed version of major literary works in our school. But we never really instilled a love for literature, let alone our own literature.

For example, Tan Twan Eng's first novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Greek, Romanian, Czech, Serbian and French.

One wonders why there isn't a Malay translation in spite of the fact that the story is set in Penang.