Beyond “Tribalism”: Re-imagining Malaysia in Adibah Amin’s This End of the Rainbow

In this chapter, I intend to investigate the Malaysian bilingual writer Adibah Amin’s only novel in the English language, This End of the Rainbow (2006). I wish to argue that the author’s primary objective in the novel is to demonstrate how to “detribalize” Malaysia and create a holistic national identity by bringing the various races together, overcoming their historical rivalries and simmering tensions, augmented by the British colonial rule and Japanese Occupation. I wish to further argue that the national identity that Adibah Amin envisions for Malaysia is both inward-looking and outward-looking—taking care of itself as a mutually cooperative society while maintaining friendly relations with other countries, even those who were once the sources of oppression. Finally, I wish to contend that although the novel is set in the pre-independence period and probes the political circumstances of the time, it also indirectly comments on the current fragmented state of Malaysia, as the novel was written and published only in the new millennium.