The Singapore Grip

I love how this novel veers between the comic (the preening self-importance of a British family that runs a trading company) and the tragic (death and mayhem as Japanese troops set Singapore on fire in 1942). Father cynically manipulates markets; daughter carries on with unsuitable men; approved suitor arrives from Europe to reveal himself as an idealist who spouts praise for the League of Nations. You’ll learn a thing or two about how colonial companies of the time built enormous wealth by squeezing it from impoverished plantation workers, and how the war turned everything upside down.

Something very different, and perhaps more familiar. Farrell is a master story-teller, one of the best of the twentieth century, and this book has it all – brilliantly-drawn characters, suspense, romance, action, and plenty of humour too, as it tells the story of the biggest military disaster in British history – the fall of Singapore to the Japanese. At the same time, he skewers British colonialism as well as anyone. A big, fat engrossing read – if you’ve not read it already, I’m jealous of the pleasure awaiting you.