Title: Sybil Kathigasu: Eyewitness to History
Speakers: Fahmi Mustaffa, Jean-Charles Khalifa, and Elsa Lafaye de Micheaux
Moderator: Gareth Richards
Date: Thursday, 31 July 2025
Time: 8:00–9:30 PM
Venue: Conference Hall, Penang Institute
Registration:
Note: Entrance to this event is FREE. Join us in person or watch the live stream on Penang Institute’s Facebook and YouTube channel.
No Dram of Mercy is the story of a woman’s courage, told simply and unassumingly in her own words. Sybil Kathigasu (1899–1948) was a nurse who became caught up in the horrors of the Japanese occupation of Malaya. Her selfless concern for the sick and wounded anti-Japanese guerrillas who came to her house secretly for treatment ended inevitably in her betrayal and imprisonment by the Japanese authorities.
This tale of fortitude under duress and torture is testimony to the indomitability of the human spirit. No Dram of Mercy has been newly translated into Malay by Fahmi Mustaffa, Kenangan Luka (Gerakbudaya), and into French by Jean-Charles Khalifa, Sans une once de miséricorde (Atlande).
Fahmi Mustaffa is a writer, literary editor, translator and visual artist, known for his bold and thought-provoking works. His novels explore deep social and cultural issues, and he plays a pivotal role in shaping the Malaysian literary and art landscape. His latest book is a Malay translation of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditation, titled Renungan (Biblio Press, 2024).
Jean-Charles Khalifa is a former lecturer in English and linguistics at the University of Poitiers, France. His translations include the works of authors like Earl Thomson, Frederick Exley and Ken Kesey, and he is the French adaptor of the award-winning graphic novel My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris.
Elsa Lafaye de Micheaux is a political economist and professor at the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilisations, Paris, France. She is the co-founder of the Institut Pondok Perancis in Kuala Lumpur, which promotes academic, scientific and cultural exchanges between France and Malaysia. She is the author of The Development of Malaysian Capitalism: From British Rule to the Present Day (SIRD, 2017).
Gareth Richards is a writer, editor and bookseller. His most recent book (as co-editor) is Discourses, Agency and Identity in Malaysia.
On 31 July, 2025, Penang Institute celebrated the Malayan-era author Sybil Kathigasu with the launch of the Malay- and French-language translations of her posthumously published autobiography, No Dram of Mercy (first published in 1954, followed by a second edition in 2006).
Organised jointly with Gerakbudaya, the event saw writer, activist, and artist Fahmi Mustaffa, who translated No Dram into Kenangan Luka, sharing the emotional challenges he experienced as he sought to write as faithfully as he could as Sybil – as if she had written in Malay (or as a Malay).
Following him, language and linguistics expert Jean-Charles Khalifa, spoke of his experience translating No Dram into Sans une once de miséricorde by sharing the more academic and intellectual curiosities of the work of translating. Jean-Charles’ presentation included a Mandarin-language reading of a passage from No Dram by Pui Yin.
Gerakbudaya director Gareth Richards and Elsa Lafaye de Micheaux provided the historical and cultural contexts to the publication of No Dram, Kenangan Luka, and Sans une once de miséricorde in Malaysia and France.
