Existentialism Avant La Lettre: Revisiting Henri Fauconnier and The Soul of Malaya in a Wider Context

Abstract

The contention in this paper is that Henri Fauconnier's renowned novel The Soul of Malaya (Malaisie) written and set in colonial Malaya, deserves a closer reading within the context of the Modernist genre, and beyond. The novel's wider significance often has been overlooked in favour of viewing it as symptomatic of a colonial mindset. In part this is a fair assessment, but there are other aspects of this award-winning novel that deserve a deeper exploration and hence a wider readership and scholarship. Fauconnier's novel echoes much of what was to come after him. While the novel merits inclusion into the Modernist canon, Malaisie also – takes the reader of Camus, for example, into familiar territory. Existentialism and Dasein (“Being in the World”) are central concerns which are deftly explored and articulated in this remarkable homage to humanity's quest for meaning.