Not many British schoolgirls have grown up to become revolutionary heroes of distant, eastern nations but Muriel Stewart Walker did just that. Under a multitude of different names – ‘K’tut Tantri’ and ‘Surabaya Sue’ being the best know – she joined in the struggle for Indonesian independence after the Second World War and broadcast its revolutionary message to the world on Rebel Radio. But she did more and smuggled arms, and probably drugs, to help finance the new Republic and experienced bloody battle in the British attack on Surabaya that some have seen as a war crime. She went on to become an intimate of the revolutionary leaders and finally lived to see Indonesia take its place amongst the free nations of the world. Glaswegian ‘Surabaya Sue’ is virtually unknown in the West and, even in Indonesia, there have always been doubts about her version of events that many have dismissed outright as a blatant mixture of outrageous fantasy and dishonest omissions. Snow over Surabaya happily embraces those doubts and brings a new, spirited account of her adventures in that tempestuous world.

Snow Over Surabaya

Biographies & Memoirs

Barley Author, Nigel

Historical

Monsoon Books Pte. Ltd.

By the time the British surrendered to the Japanese in February 1942 at the fall Singapore, nearly all white civilians had left Malaya. One remarkable exception to the white flight was Nona Baker, ‘a parson's youngest daughter' from Dunstable, Bedfordshire. Nona Baker and her brother, Vin, general manager of Sungei Lembing tin mine in Pahang, stayed behind in the Malayan jungle and were later adopted by Chinese guerrillas (who, after World War Two, would become the Communist terrorists of the Malayan Emergency). Against all odds, this remarkable, brave young woman, known as Pai Naa (White Nona), remained in the jungle for three years, avoiding capture by the Japanese and betrayal by spies before being delivered safely into the care of war hero Freddie Spencer Chapman. With hair cut short Nona Baker worked alongside the men while under constant threat of discovery and certain death, and with the men she suffered from malaria, dysentery, beriberi, hunger and, above all, fear.

Pai Naa: The True Story of Englishwoman Nona Baker's Survival in the Malayan Jungle During WWII

Cross, Robert

Thatcher, Dorothy

Community & Culture

Through a collection of letters written to his best friend and to his father in England, and from his own personal diary entries, John Dodd's memoir offers a fascinating and amusing glimpse of life as a colonial rubber planter. With true stories and confessions that would make even Somerset Maugham blush, we discover what life was really like for young colonial planters in late-1950s Malaya. Increasing daily rubber output may have been their goal but for the young planters the bigger picture of chasing girls and finding a ‘keep' was of much greater importance. But life was more than just a series of stengahs in the clubhouse, dalliances in the Chinese brothels of Penang and charming ‘pillow dictionaries' – there were strikes, riots, snakes, plantation fires and deadly ambushes by Communist terrorists to contend with. Set against the backdrop of the Emergency period, the rise of nationalism and Malaya's subsequent Independence, A Company of Planters is a very personal, moving and humorous account of one man's experiences on the frequently isolated rubber plantations of colonial Malaya.

A Company of Planters: Confessions of a Colonial Rubber Planter in 1950s Malaya

Dodd, John

Seventeenth-century Java is in turmoil between its Hindu-Buddhist past and its Muslim future, while pepper draws Europe's quarrelling spice-hungry traders to its shores. 
Thomas Hodges of the East India Company seizes a chance at glory by being the first to venture ashore at the pepper port of Banten in 1608. Will he unlock the mysterious riches of Java for the English, or die forgotten with a Javanese kris or Portuguese poignard between his ribs? He falls under the spell of a captivating interpreter, Sri, but can only retain both her and his Englishness by inventing a mission from King James to the mysterious great ruler of the interior – Mataram. 
In Mataram he finds a kingdom poised to decide its destiny – between a rich past of gods and spirits, a sterner Islam and pushy Europeans offering both science and God. For Hodges and Sri, survival alone will be a challenge; reconciling survival and desire with conscience in this baffling spiritual landscape appears impossible.

Mataram: A novel of love, faith and power in early Java

Literature & Fiction

Reid, Tony

Genre Fiction

Skinny Chinese taxi-girls dance with off-duty British military personnel at the Yam Yam nightclub to the strains of ‘Rose, Rose, I love you' and ‘Terang Bulan'. Attractively dressed in their long, tight-fitting, slit-sided cheongsams, the girls also listen out for loose talk, which they feed back to their Communist handlers. It is 1950s Malaya and the country is in the throes of the Malayan Emergency. As the British do battle with Communist terrorists hiding deep in the jungle, one British officer, a Communist sympathizer, has come to the attention of the staff at the Yam Yam. When Alan Hinlea, a British Gurkha captain with a hatred of a class system that has always kept him down, deserts to the guerillas and is spirited away to the jungle Communist HQ, Chin Peng, the leader of the Malayan Communist Party gloats at what he hopes will be a major propaganda victory. A fellow British Gurkha officer is despatched with five Gurkhas to hunt Hinlea down and the chase through pathless jungle becomes a race against time and a contest of deadly jungle warfare skills. Operation Janus is the first in a trilogy of books involving Gurkha military units that may be read in any order and is followed by Operation Blind Spot and Operation Four Rings. The author, JP Cross, a retired Gurkha colonel, old ‘jungle hand' and counter-insurgency expert, draws on real events he witnessed during his time fighting in the Malayan Emergency and on true characters, including a British officer of his own battalion who attempted to join the Communist terrorists.

Operation Janus

Cross, JP

On 6 February 1819, Stamford Raffles, William Farquhar, Temenggong Abdul Rahman and Sultan Hussein signed a treaty that granted the British East India Company the right to establish a trading settlement on the sparsely populated island of Singapore. Forbidden Hill (Singapore Saga, Vol. 1) is a meticulously researched and vividly imagined historical narrative that brings to life the stories of the early European, Malay, Chinese and Indian pioneers––the administrators, merchants, policemen, boatmen, coolies, concubines, slaves and secret society soldiers––whose vision and intrigues drive the rapid expansion of the port city in the early decades of the nineteenth century. While Raffles and Farquhar clash over the administration of the settlement, the Scottish merchant adventurer Ronnie Simpson and Englishwoman Sarah Hemmings find love and redemption as they battle an American duelist and Illanun pirates. As the ghosts of the rajahs of the ancient city of Singapura fade into the shadows of Forbidden Hill, the new settlers forge their linked destinies in the ‘emporium of the Eastern seas'.

Forbidden Hill (Volume 1) (Singapore Saga, 1)

Greenwood Author of the Singapore Saga series, John D.

Set against the expansion of Singapore in the years 1834-1854, Chasing the Dragon (Singapore Saga, Vol. 2) continues to vividly portray the lives of the early pioneers of the expanding port city, including Joseph Balestier, Seah Eu Chin, Captain Henry Keppel, Tan Tock Seng, Munshi Abdullah, Governor Butterworth and Whampoa as well as fictional characters who bring nineteenth-century Singapore to life. 
Duncan Simpson comes to manhood when he joins James Brooke, the White Rajah of Sarawak, on his expeditions against the piratical Borneo Dayaks; an Indian cattleman turns to tiger hunting when his herd is decimated by disease; a Malay magician conjures up magic spells to capture the love of a woman and destroy her husband; a Chinese mother is haunted by the ghostly cries of her abandoned child; a mesmerist performs a dangerous surgery; and Chinese secret society gangs murder Christian farmers in the interior of the island. 
As the troop ships of the British Expeditionary Force assemble in Singapore in preparation for the First Opium War, Hong Xiuquan has a dream that will launch the Taiping Rebellion in China, taking the lives of twenty million and powerfully impacting the fortunes of the new citizens of Singapore. 
Chasing the Dragon is volume two in the Singapore Saga, a series of historical fiction that spans the first 100 years of Singapore, and follows Forbidden Hill.

Chasing the Dragon (Volume 2) (Singapore Saga, 2)

Greenwood Author of the Singapore S, John D.

British & Irish

Set against the development of Singapore in the years 1852-1869, Hungry Ghosts (Singapore Saga, Vol 3) continues the vivid portrayal of the lives of the early pioneers, including Tan Kim Ching, W. H. Read, Habib Noh, Tan Kim Seng, Mother St Mathilde, Syed Ahmed Alsagoff and Whampoa as well as an array of fictional characters who bring nineteenth-century Singapore to life. A female refugee from the Taiping Rebellion is kidnapped in Amoy and sold as a concubine in Singapore; an enterprising Indian convict converts his training as a metalworker into the more lucrative business of counterfeiting; a terror-filled secret society soldier is led down to the ten courts of hell on the night of the hungry ghosts; Duncan Simpson meets with the Heavenly King in Nanking and is tortured in a Chinese prison; an English wife escapes a loveless marriage when the 'ghost ship' CSS Alabama puts into Singapore. As the fates and fortunes of its protagonists play themselves out against the backdrop of the Indian Mutiny, the Second Opium War and the last years of the Taiping rebellion, Singapore becomes a Crown colony and celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of its founding. Hungry Ghosts is volume three in the Singapore Saga, a series of historical fiction covering the early years of Singapore, and follows Forbidden Hill and Chasing the Dragon.

Hungry Ghosts (Volume 3) (Singapore Saga, 3)

In December 1950, the worst riots Singapore has ever seen shut down the town for days, killing 18 people and wounding 173. Racial and religious tension had been simmering for months over the custody battle for wartime waif Maria Hertogh between her Malay Muslim foster mother and her Dutch-Catholic biological parents. In May 1950, Eurasian Annie Collins, following this case and filled with hope, returns to Singapore seeking her own lost baby Maria. As the time bomb ticks and Annie unravels the threads of her quest into increasingly dangerous territory, she finds strange recollections intruding, ones that have nothing to do with her own memories of her wartime experiences: disturbing visions and dreams which force her to doubt not just her past life, but her whole idea of who she truly is and even to question the search itself. Finding Maria is at once a mother's quest for her child, an unravelling mystery and a journey into suppressed memory and the nature of self-delusion.

Finding Maria

Farnham, Dawn

Literary

Beyond the Bali known from idyllic images of Hollywood movies and five-star resort holidays are the secret lives of men and women who flock to the island from around the world in search of new beginnings. Not all find the bliss and peace they hope for. Island Secrets is a collection of stories about lives fraught with scandal, conflict, heartache and despair. A western wife of a Balinese man enjoys a happy marriage and all the trappings of island wealth but the arrival of a man from home throws her life into turmoil as she surrenders to his seduction. A successful middle-aged ad exec leaves his family to become an artist; he lives an enviable life with a beautiful woman half his age but he soon finds himself weary of paradise. A recently divorced woman goes on a solo holiday and is irresistibly drawn to an attractive young man of dubious intentions. Bali-resident Alwin Blum offers up vignettes of Bali with characters who navigate their new lives in the sunshine and tropical splendour of the island while harbouring darkness within. Some stay for a season, others for the rest of their days. Some come to forget through sensual escapades, while others re-invent themselves to fit with the brand-new lives they have created.

Island Secrets: Stories of Love, Lust and Loss in Bali

Blum, Alwin

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