A PRINCES Risborough resident who worked for the UN won an award this summer for her latest novel, New Beginnings.

Chan Ling Yap first moved to Risborough in 1997 with her husband, Tony Loftas and two children, Hsumin, now 39, and Lee, 31.

She originates from Malaysia, which is where the inspiration for her three novels comes from.

Her latest, New Beginnings, is a moving story of the scourge of opium and one man’s plight and rise in fortune in British Malaya.

In August it won the Readers' Popular Choice Award in Malaysia/Singapore for 2014.

But novel writing came later to Chan Ling. She met her husband, who sadly passed away in May aged 74, while they both worked in Rome with the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.

They lived in the Italian capital with their family and moved to Bucks when Tony took early retirement.

Chan Ling, 66, said: "Coming back here to Princes Risborough was quite a sudden change for me. In Rome I worked full time.

"I didn't know anyone here. It was difficult to get into the community at first.

"I toyed for a short time with the idea of becoming a consultant but that would have meant I had to travel a lot...

"I thought if I am going to do something different it will have to be very different.

"I enrolled myself on a fitness instructor course and trained. I started teaching but it wasn't enough for me- just the physical activity.

"I have always written. I thought I will write a book about fitness and I did and it was published."

Fusion Fitness integrated the most successful fitness principles from East and West.

But it wasn't her first book. While at the University of Malaya, she wrote two economic textbooks in Malay and published many papers on small-scale fisheries development.

In FAO, she was responsible for reports and policy papers on rice and contributed to the Financial Times in the UK.

Chan Ling said: "I wanted to try something completely different- something where I could use my imagination.

"My husband said: 'Why don't you write a novel?' At that time when I first came back I was quite lonely as I didn't know many people during the cold winter months."

She wrote Sweet Offerings, which is about a Chinese polygamist marriage set between the late 1930s and 1960s.

Bitter-Sweet Harvest is a sequel to this about the love between a Chinese Christian woman and a Malay Muslim man who meet in Oxford.

New Beginnings goes back in time and focuses on the Chinese immigration to British Malaya.

She was inspired by the thousands of people who came to Singapore and Malaysia and how they changed the economic landscape of the country.

All her novels are about the same family but in different generations.

Chan Ling is currently writing here fourth offering, which will be a novel to bridge the gap between New Beginnings and Sweet Offerings.

Go to www.chanlingyap.com