Elite Malay polygamy is an account of polygamy among the Malay urban elite of Malaysia, where Islamic Family Law (IFL) enactments allow Muslim men to marry up to four wives at a time. Here, married men hold the status of MBA (‘married but available’)—a cause of great apprehension for the 17 elite Malay women featured in this book, who must navigate their ‘polygamous anxieties’ (p. 1) while their lives are upended by polygamy in various ways.

The book is divided thematically into 15 chapters, each addressing an important aspect of Malay polygamy. ‘Stories’ (chapter 1) rationalises the organisation of this book along ‘narrative themes’ to reflect the ‘fragmentary, discontinuous narratives’ the interlocutors have lived, and the way these were related to the author in the field (p. 26). ‘Elites’ (chapter 2) provides the economic and historical context to the rise of the Malay urban elite in postcolonial Malaysia, who increasingly adopt polygamy as an urban status symbol. ‘Husbands’ (chapter 6) and ‘Wives’ (chapter 7) explain the perceived rationale for why husbands would marry additional wives, and why women enter a polygamous union for love, companionship, and to have children. ‘Co-wives’ (chapter 9), ‘Children’ (chapter 11), ‘Families’ (chapter 12), and ‘Rivals’ (chapter 13) demonstrate the complex making and undoing of kinship between spouses, co-wives, and between parents and children in Malay polygamous families. ‘Secrets’ (chapter 4), ‘Blame’ (chapter 5), ‘Desires’ (chapter 8), and ‘Magic’ (chapter 14) describe the dark currents directing the course of polygamous life, often resulting in tragic ends elaborated in ‘Divorce’ (chapter 15).

One of the main thrusts of Koktvedgaard Zeitzen's argument is that polygamy is ‘by no means antithetical to modern life or modernity’ (p. 39); rather, it is one of the defining markers of modern urban elite identity in contemporary Malaysia. This is convincingly presented by positioning the resurgence of polygamy at the turn of the millennium—a time of rapid social, religious, and economic change in Malaysia that precipitated the rise of the new Malay urban elite. These orang kaya baru (the nouveaux riches) embrace polygamy as an act of conspicuous consumption to demonstrate their wealth. Their financial ability to marry and maintain multiple wives indicates that they have ‘reached a status level that makes polygamy desirable as a sign of being elite’ (p. 39). By practising a form of marriage traditionally associated with the aristocracy (p. 96), Malay men are therefore strategically ‘signal[ing] aspirations to be part of or strengthen their positioning in the ruling classes’ (p. 40). In the wake of the Islamic revivalist movement of the 1980s, polygamy also became embroiled in the politics of ethnoreligious identity, becoming a visible marker of Malay and Muslim identity (p. 244). These arguments link together the socioeconomic developments and religio-political conditions germinal for the resurgence in polygamy in modern-day Malaysia. They also explain why Malay men would choose to practice a form of marriage that, while economically extractive and emotionally precarious in many ways, nonetheless brings in immeasurable immaterial gains for those pursuing status, prestige, and privilege within the elite community (p. 198).

However, Malay men's gains in polygamy are hardly reciprocal for women. Indeed, the book's subtitle, Wives, wealth and woes, leaves no doubt as to who typically end up as collateral damage in Malay elite polygamy. First wives unwittingly forced into polygamy experience a decline in their social and economic status upon the annexation of a new wife to the marriage. They may fall further into disgrace by rumours circulating among elite circles that the husband's second marriage may be due to inadequacies of the first. Second wives may resort to (secret) polygamy for lawful intimacy, companionship, and motherhood—all of which, under Malay adat (culture) and Malaysian Shari'ah law, necessitate marriage. However, they may be disappointed when, over time, the husband withdraws his time, resources, and affections and returns to his first wife. Second wives furthermore suffer stigma and condemnation from other women for ‘stealing another woman's husband’. Regardless of their position within the marriage, these elite women all ‘felt oppressed by polygamy in their lives’, largely ‘due to what they considered [to be] men's false management of polygamy’ (p. 5). Yet it is also women who end up internalising the blame for their husband's polygamy as a ‘strategy’ to ‘protect themselves against (the effects of) polygamy’ (p. 91).

While women's painful experiences in polygamy are represented in great depth and breadth, Malay elite men, on the other hand, are presented in the book as almost invincible and are not held accountable at all for their polygamous practices. In one instance, one Malay wife remarked, ‘Men mostly don't care about polygamy; men are never blamed for doing it—in men's eyes they don't see it as a problem’ (p. 198).

Such observations are revealing as a projection of Malay elite women's emotional response to the perceived nonchalance of men in polygamy. However, we may perhaps be more cautious in taking this statement as representative of men's own experiences in polygamy due to the critical lack of communication on polygamy between husbands and wives noted by the author (p. 91). Moreover, the book does not feature any interviews with polygamous husbands themselves, making it difficult to discount the possibility that the experiences and attitudes of Malay polygamists may also include some measure of guilt, anguish, and regret underneath this façade of apathy and indifference. The difficulty of capturing the latter highlights the methodological challenges faced by female researchers studying polygamy in the Malaysian context, where access to the field—and to the phenomenon studied—is highly gendered (p. 28).

What is unique about the elite group studied is the extent of the wealth possessed—not only by the husband, but presumably by the wives too, who are described as successful and highly-educated businesswomen, politicians, and women of aristocratic lineage. A study on polygamy among Malay elites would have therefore merited a deeper discussion on the question of sharing ‘wealth’—in particular, matrimonial wealth (harta sepencarian), as permitted under Malay adat and IFL. Some states such as Selangor (where many of the Malay urban elite also reside) makes the division of matrimonial assets a requirement before permission is granted for polygamy. This legal obligation may suggest another reason why many wealthy elite men prefer to contract their polygamous marriages covertly out of state, rather than through the Shari'ah court.

This book makes a significant contribution to the study of Malay polygamy in contemporary Malaysia among an exclusive demographic group, whose wealth and elite status facilitate a more covert and concealed polygamous lives.