"Mr. Swettenham's style is simple and direct and vigorous. Particularly good is his eye for colour, and he has a fine sense of the brilliant melancholy of the East. To few falls the good fortune of introducing us to a new people, and seldom have we the advantage of so admirable a guide."—Pall Mall Gazette.
"Nothing approaching Mr. Swettenham's intimate knowledge and illuminative analysis has yet seen the light about that fascinating country which he well describes."—Daily Chronicle.
"In his vivid pages we see, practically for the first time, the real Malay, and in these series of brilliant pen-pictures, more thrilling than the fictionist could produce, one can get the key to the character of these interesting people."—Whitehall Review.
"If Mr. Swettenham has not written the ideal book about Malaya he has come very near it. The whole book has a charm and reality that makes it as readable as any novel."—Glasgow Herald.
"Graphic word-piclures of the Malaya and the Malays. Instructive and fascinating work."—Daily Telegraph.
"Mr. Swettenham is gifted with considerable power of graphic description and that keen relish for telling a story without which the most thrilling narrative loses half its interest."—St. James's Gazette.
"Its unconventional character is one of the most attractive points about this very attractive volume. Mr. Swettenham succeeds in making the life and character of the Malays real to us in a way that so far as we are aware no other writer has done."—Publishers' Circular.
"Mr. Swettenham is always lucid, always entertaining. His book is a vivid presentment of a vivid llfe."—Gentlewoman.
"The book is very interesting throughout, and sheds a ray of light on one of the dark places of the earth."—Liverpool Courier.
"lt would be difficult to over—praise these sketches of men and manners in Malay. Wonderfully interesting and instructive."—Liverpool Mercury.
"A pleasant simplicity of style, a total lack of affectation, and a comparatively unknown land and people for subject-matter, make 'Malay Sketches' entirely delightful. They are always vivid, always convincing."—St. James's Budget.
"This is one or those books which exercise such a fascination upon the mind of the stay-at-home traveller. Stay-at-home though he may be, he has no difficulty in distinguishing the work of a genuine authority from the hasty and inexact impressions of the idle globe-trotter. ‘Malay Sketches‘ will be speedily recognised by him as belonging to the more reliable kind or his favourite literature."—Spectator.
London: JOHN LANE, The Bodley Head.
