Singapore Saga / John D. Greenwood

John D. Greenwood is a Scot now transplanted to New York, who began his career teaching philosophy, including a stint at the National University of Singapore (NUS), but who has since become an historian of psychology. He recently re-visited Singapore to promote Forbidden Hill, volume 1 of a projected six-part series, Singapore Saga, which will, when complete, offer a fictionalised overview of the first hundred years of modern Singapore's existence, from its founding by Raffles in 1819, to the aftermath of World War One, in 1919. I met John at NUS to talk about his ambitious undertaking. 

Forbidden Hill covers 1819, to the mid 1830s. It features multiple plotlines rooted in historical events, and multiple characters - European, Chinese, Indian and Malay. Many of John's characters - Raffles, Farquhar - are based on real people, although others are completely made-up.

Backlist books: The Story of the Stone by Cao Xueqin and Gao E

Backlist books is a column by Lucy Day Werts that focuses on enduring, important works from or about Asia.

This post is about The Story of the Stone (aka The Dream of the Red Chamber), a sprawling work about a boy born into a wealthy household only to witnesses its gradual decline as he grows into a young man.

Written in the mid-1700s, this classic Chinese novel (one of the Four Classic Chinese Novels, in fact) was circulated as an incomplete manuscript before its publication in 1792, when forty additional chapters were added to the original eighty.

See below to find out what you need to know to decide whether you should read The Story of the Stone, or what you should know about it even if you never do!

Lion City lit: Lancing Girls of a Happy World

Asian Books Blog is based in Singapore. Our regular column Lion City lit explores in-depth what’s going on in the City-State, lit-wise.

Local publishing house Ethos Books has just launched Lancing Girls of a Happy World by Adeline Foo

Lancing is a Singaporean pronunciation of dancing, and the book is an account of the cabaret girls of yesteryear. In the late 1930s, the first wave of Shanghainese glamour girls arrived to join the cabarets in Singapore. Another wave came following the Communist Revolution of 1949. These Chinese migrants influenced local women to join the cabaret as professional dancers, too.