The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [721]
In any case, there is really nothing more to be said. And so, if you have been reading in a deck-chair on the lawn, it is time to go inside and make the tea. And if you have been reading in bed, why, it is time to put out the light now and go to sleep. Tomorrow is another day, as they say, as they say.
Afterword
Among those works listed below which have been most valuable in this attempt to recreate the Far East of forty years ago I am particularly indebted to Professor P. T. Bauer’s work on the rubber industry and especially to his classic report on smallholdings prepared for the Colonial Office in 1946 which, with J. S. Furnivall’s Colonial Policy and Practice, first suggested to me another angle from which to consider the British Empire. The passage from The Planter in 1930 read by Matthew in the dying-house is quoted in Bauer, The Rubber Industry, p. 285. R. C. H. MacKie’s This Was Singapore, the most evocative description of Singapore between the wars, also exerted a considerable influence on certain scenes. For Chinese love terminology I have relied chiefly on the fascinating Yin Yang, The Chinese Way of Love by Charles Humana and Wang Wu, though here and there I have been unable to resist taking a hand in it myself. Finally, no one could consider writing about the military campaign without making use of the outstanding work of the official historian, the late Major-General S. Woodburn Kirby.
Books apart, I am grateful to old Singapore hands, particularly Mrs Enid Sutton and Mr Richard Phelps, who have enlightened me about life there in those days, as well as to those inhabitants of modern Singapore who gave me their hospitality and help, especially Mr Nick Bridge of the New Zealand High Commission, and Mr Donald Moore. I would also like to thank: Mr Lacy Wright and Miss Thé-anh Cao who kindly showed me Saigon in the last few weeks before it became ‘Ho Chi Minh City’, Mr Ian Angus of King’s College Library, London, my brother, Robert Farrell, of the University of Victoria Library, a constant source of good ideas and information, and Giorgio and Ginevra Agamben, from whom I first heard of the ‘Singapore Grip’. Lastly, without a generous contribution from Booker McConnell Ltd for an earlier novel it would have been financially difficult for me to write this one.
Bibliography
Abend, Hallett, Chaos in Asia (London 1940)
Abend, Hallett, My Years in China (London 1944)
Allen, G. C. and Donnithorne A., Western Enterprise in Indonesia and Malaya (London 1957)
Anon., The Bells Go Down (London 1944)
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Barnett, Robert W., Economic Shanghai (New York 1941)
Bauer, P. T., Colonial Office: Report on a visit to the Rubber Growing Smallholdings of Malaya (London 1946)
Bauer, P. T., The Rubber Industry (London 1948)
Catroux, G. A. J., Deux Actes du Drame Indochinois (Paris 1959)
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