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A Far Horizon
Calcutta, 1756. In Indian Black Town, the luminously beautiful Sati is believed to be possessed by the goddess Kali, and finds herself at the centre of a religious cult. In British White Town, Chief Magistrate Holwell and Governor Drake come together to face a common enemy – Siraj Uddaulah, the volatile young nawab in Murshidabad. When the nawab finally descends upon Calcutta with a huge army, it’s too late for those British residents who have not fled the city in time. Locked into Fort William with a large number of the Black Town population, these British prisoners spend a night of horror that would become legend of the history of the Raj. Lushly written and richly evocative, A Far Horizon is a sweeping chronicle of the notorious incident of the Black Hole of Calcutta that would later be used to justify the British empire’s colonisation of India.
A Different Sky
Singapore - a trading post where different lives jostle and mix. It is 1927, and three young people are starting to question whether this inbetween island can ever truly be their home. Mei Lan comes from a famous Chinese dynasty but yearns to free herself from its stifling traditions; ten-year-old Howard seethes at the indignities heaped on his fellow Eurasians by the colonial British; Raj, fresh off the boat from India, wants only to work hard and become a successful businessman. As the years pass, and the Second World War sweeps through the east, with the Japanese occupying Singapore, the three are thrown together in unexpected ways, and tested to breaking point. Richly evocative, A Different Sky paints a scintillating panorama of thirty tumultuous years in Singapore's history through the passions and struggles of characters the reader will find it hard to forget.
A Choice of Evils
This epic novel is set against the backdrop of the Sino-Japanese war, from the time Japan annexed Manchuria in the early 1930s until the end of the Second World War. During these years, a militaristic Japan pursued an aggressive dream to colonize not only China but also the whole of Southeast Asia and beyond. The brutal sacking of Chiang Kai-shek’s new capital, Nanking, which refused to surrender to the Imperial Army, was a graphic example of Japanese retribution in a war of punishment. The story of these tumultuous years is told through the lives of a disparate group of fictional characters: a young Russian woman émigré caught between her complex love affair with a British journalist and a liberal-minded Japanese diplomat, an Indian nationalist working for Japanese intelligence, a Chinese professor with communist sympathies, an American missionary doctor and a Japanese soldier, who are all brought together by the monstrous dislocation of war. Enmeshed in a savage world beyond their control, each character turns to the deepest part of themselves to find a way to survive.
The Pink, White, and Blue Universe
The Pink, White and Blue Universe is a collection of tales that record Meira Chand's own personal passage to India. Set in the colour-drenched chaos of Mumbai, these stories weave together the elements of faith, sensuality, hope and pathos that pervade the many corners of life in India. Ranging from tender and poignant to dark and comic, the stories in this collection are peopled by those cast adrift and left in states of bewilderment as they navigate their way through a society that is both humane and pitiless. India delivers to these characters moments of reckoning as they confront complexities and contradictions at the heart of themselves.
House of The Sun
In March Saturn is coming into the House of the Sun. Saturn is strong and will bring trouble. […] Wear a sapphire, then nothing can harm you,” Bhai Sahib, the priest, warns Mrs Hathiramani, reading her horoscope in his temple on the second floor of Sadhbela, a Bombay apartment block. Forty years before, at the time of Partition, the residents of Sadhbela were Hindu refugees from the rival towns of Rohri and Sukkur. In Sadhbela now these Sindhi exiles live as one family, fortunes drastically changed. Before blown out of the House of the Sun in a monsoon squall, the planet has influenced some lives irreversibly. Sham Pumnani, the embezzler, finds a new, unexpected future. His sister, Lakshmi, experiences the worst cruelties of womanhood in a traditional society. Rani Murjani learns to stand up for herself and reach out to a new age. Through it all Mr Hathiramani writes furiously against time, to complete a translation of Shah Abdul Latif, immortal poet of medieval Sind, so that in Sadhbela a proud past and a dying identity will not be entirely forgotten.
Asian Voices in English
A selection of papers presented at the Symposium on English Literature by Asian authors entitled Asian Voices in English held at The University of Hong Kong, 27-30 April 1990. Two kinds of writing experience are focused upon: one is the experience of post-colonial writers, who are re-appropriating the English language for their own cultural purposes. The other is the experience of immigrant writers, who bring an Asian view to bear on the culture of the English-speaking countries in which they live.
The Painted Cage
Marriage at twenty to an older man takes Amy Redmore from the cool green fields of Somerset to Japan, where Reggie is to take up the post of Secretary for the Yokohama United Club. Already she has learned some disturbing things about her new husband. He has a mistress by the name of Annie Luke, and a child from that liaison. Secondly he is an arsenic addict and habitually takes massive doses – more than enough to kill a normal man. But the real trouble begins with their new life on the Bluff, where the British all live in segregated splendour. Reggie is out all day with his work at the Club and at night he is lost to Yokohama’s social whirl and the temptations of the town’s notorious pleasure quarter. Amy, with her freshly awakened sense of independence finds new friends, and, more significantly, enemies – people who when the time comes will brand her publicly as an adulteress and a murderess.
The Bonsai Tree
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Sacred Waters
Orphaned as a child and widowed at thirteen, Sita has always known the shame of being born female in the Indian society. Her life constrained and shaped by the men around her, she could not be more different from her daughter, Amita—a headstrong university professor determined to live life on her own terms. While trying to unravel the mysteries in her mother’s past, Amita encounters a traumatic event that leads her down the path of self-discovery. Unfolding simultaneously, their stories are set against the dramatic sweep of India’s anti-colonial struggle in the 1940s, and move between past and present, from rural India to the chaotic Burmese battlefront where Sita experiences life as a recruit in the Indian National Army to modern-day Singapore. Richly layered and beautifully evocative, Sacred Waters is a compelling exploration of two women’s struggle to assert themselves in male-dominated societies of both the past and the present.
White Skin, Dark Skin, Power, Dream
In this highly readable collection of essays, Francis Jarman ranges over such different topics as race, sex, the Second World War, detective novels, Kipling, torture, widow-burning, the Great Indian Novel, travel writing, the Srebrenica Massacre, the Indian Mutiny, and the reasons why writers write. What all the contributions have in common is a concern with problems of perception and communication across cultures. Complete with Notes, Bibliographies, and detailed Index.
