Fear. Body-sapping hard work from dawn until dusk, day after day, year after year. Ignorance, superstition, envy, the narrowest of horizons. And fear.

Welcome to the life of the poor Asian rice farmer, in fact, the life of most of humankind until relatively recently.

Shahnon Ahmad (b. 1933) was born and grew up in the Malaysian village that is the setting of Ranjau Sepanjang Jalan (Traps Along the Way - 1966) before he received a university education in Australia (but not until 1971), was elected member of parliament and became an important author (the most important, according to some sources) in his home country of Malaysia. And so, in this story of a small rice farmer and his family, Ahmad is writing straight from the heart.