It was the 1970s in a remote town on the east coast of Malaysia. 79 Park Avenue, a vintage Harold Robbins novel with pages aged to a deep yellow, fell into the hands of a ten-year-old. While most of her friends were still immersed in the wholesome adventures of Enid Blyton and Nancy Drew, this girl’s mother—a staff nurse at Kuantan General Hospital—offered a different kind of literary journey.

“Better than Mills and Boon; there’s nothing to learn there. They’re boring, trust me,” her mother advised, pulling the adult fiction from a dusty local bookstore shelf.

In Malaysia today, 79 Park Avenue—with its front cover featuring a half-naked blonde lying under a satin blue sheet, her long legs crossed on a red velvet sofa—would probably be banned by the government for its take on juvenile prostitution, explicit sex scenes and rough language. But it had piqued the interest of that ten-year-old, who’s since become a committed reader.

• Tags: Issue 40, Malaysia, Susan Loone