The Singapore Grip

Description

Singapore just before the Japanese invasion in the Second World War: the Blackett family's prosperous world of tennis parties, cocktails and deferential servants seems unchanging. But it is poised on the edge of the abyss...This is the eve of the Fall of Singapore and, as we know, of much else besides. Not only the Blacketts, their friends and enemies, but many individuals are caught up in the events. Singapore at this historical watershed has never been so faithfully and passionately recreated.

Author description

J.G. Farrell was born in Liverpool in 1935 and spent a good deal of his life abroad, including periods in France and Ireland, where he spent much of his childhood, and a prolonged visit to the Far East to research the background for this novel. Among his novels, TROUBLES won the Faber Memorial Prize in 1970 and the Lost Man Booker prize in 2010 and THE SIEGE OF KRISHNAPUR won the Booker Prize in 1973. He died in 1979.