The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [722]
Humana, Charles and Wang Wu, Yin Yang (London 1971)
Kirby, Major-General S. Woodburn, The War Against Japan vol. 1 (London 1957)
Kirby, Major-General S. Woodburn, Singapore, The Chain of Disaster (London 1971)
Lief, A., The Firestone Story (New York 1951)
MacKie, R. C. H., This Was Singapore (London 1942)
Maxwell, Sir G., The Civil Defence of Malaya (London 1944)
Mills, L. A., British Rule in East Asia (London 1942)
Morrison, Ian, Malayan Postscript (London 1942)
Onraet, R., Singapore, A Police Background (London 1947)
Owen, Frank, The Fall of Singapore (London 1960)
Percival, Lieutenant-General A. E., The War in Malaya (London 1949)
Playfair, Giles, Singapore Goes Off the Air (London 1944)
Priestley, J. B., Postscripts (London 1940)
Richardson, M. L., London’s Burning (London 1941)
Rose, Angus, Who Dies Fighting (London 1944)
Schumpeter, E. B., The Industrialisation of Japan and Manchukuo (Cambridge, Mass. 1940)
Simson, Brigadier Ivan, Singapore: Too Little, Too Late (London 1970)
Stahl, K. M., The Metropolitan Organisation of British Trade (London 1951)
Stewart, Brigadier I. M., The History of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, 2nd Battalion 1941–2 (London 1947)
Teeling, L. W. B., Gods of Tomorrow (London 1936)
Tsuji, M., Singapore, The Japanese Version (London 1962)
Willis, A. C., Singapore Guide (Singapore 1936)
Acknowledgements
The author and publishers are grateful to the following sources: Constable & Co. Ltd for permission to quote from 170 Chinese Poems translated by Arthur Waley; Eyre & Spottiswoode for permission to quote an extract from The War in Malaya by A. E. Percival; Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. for permission to quote from the MGM release The Ziegfeld Girl © 1941 Loew’s Incorporated. Copyright renewed in 1967 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc.; and Leo Feist Inc. for permission to quote from three songs: ‘You Stepped out of a Dream’ by N. H. Brown and G. Khan © 1940 renewed 1968 MGM Inc., all rights administered by Leo Feist Inc.; ‘Minnie from Trinidad’ by R. Edens © 1941 renewed 1969 Leo Feist Inc.; and ‘Caribbean Love Song’ by R. Edens and R. Freed © 1941 renewed 1969 Leo Feist Inc.; to EMI Music Publishing Ltd for permission to quote an extract from ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’ by Eric Maschwitz, © 1940 Peter Maurice Music Co. Ltd.
This is a New York Review Book
Published by The New York Review of Books
435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014
www.nyrb.com
Copyright © 1978 by James G. Farrell
Introduction copyright © 1999 by Derek Mahon, adapted from the foreword
to J. G. Farrell: The Making of a Writer by Lavinia Greacen (Bloomsbury, 1999)
and used by kind permission of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Farrell, J. G. (James Gordon), 1935–
The Singapore grip / by J. G. Farrell ; introduction by Derek Mahon.
p. cm. — (New York Review Books classics)
1. Singapore—History—Siege, 1942—Fiction. 2. Rubber industry and trade—
Fiction. 3. British—Singapore—Fiction. 4. Strikes and lockouts—Fiction.
5. Sieges—Fiction. I. Title. II. Series.
PR6056.A75S585 2005
823'.914—dc22
2004030522
Biographical Notes
J. G. FARRELL (1935–1979) was born with a caul, long considered a sign of good fortune. Academically and athletically gifted, Farrell grew up in England and Ireland. In 1956, during his first term at Oxford, he suffered what seemed a minor injury on the rugby pitch. Within days, however, he was diagnosed with polio, which nearly killed him and left him permanently weakened. Farrell’s early novels, which include The Lung and A Girl in the Head, have been overshadowed by his Empire Trilogy—Troubles, the Booker Prize-winning Siege of Krishnapur, and The Singapore Grip (all three are published by NYRB Classics). In early 1979, Farrell bought a farmhouse in Bantry Bay on the Irish coast. “I’ve been trying to write,” he admitted, “but there are so many competing interests—the prime one at the moment is fishing off the rocks..... Then a colony of bees has come to live above