Beloved by millions of readers in Southeast Asia, Kampung Boy is a humorous, fictionalized graphic memoir about a Muslim boy growing up in Malaysia. With masterful economy worthy of Charles Schultz, Lat recounts the life of Mat, a Muslim boy growing up in rural Malaysia in the 1950s: his adventures and mischief-making, fishing trips, religious study, and work on his family's rubber plantation. Meanwhile, the traditional way of life in his village (or kampung ) is steadily disappearing, with tin mines and factory jobs gradually replacing family farms and rubber small-holders. When Mat himself leaves for boarding school, he can only hope that his familiar kampung will still be there when he returns. Kampung Boy is hilarious and affectionate, with brilliant, super-expressive artwork that opens a window into a world that has now nearly vanished.

Malaysian teenager Mat makes a life-changing move from the quiet kampung where he was born to Ipoh, the rapidly industrializing nearby town. Living far from his rural roots at a boarding school, he discovers bustling streets, modern music, heady literature, budding romance, and through it all his growing passion for art. The companion novel to the critically acclaimed Kampung Boy, Town Boy offers more of Lat's delicious storytelling and enchanting pen-and-ink artwork. At once exotic and familiar, his cartoon world builds a bridge for readers into another world, another culture, and another time.

These cartoons by Malaysian cartoonist Lat return to the Kampung Boy setting of his famous autobiographical collection to compare kampung life as he knew it growing up with the modern kampung life of the eighties and nineties.