Robert Strange McNamara was arguably one of the worst public servants in post-World War II American history. Decades after the Vietnam War ended, McNamara, who served as US Defense Secretary in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, admitted that as early as 1965 he believed that the United States could not win that war yet he…
On 9 August 1965, Singapore was expelled from Malaysia, which had itself only become an independent country two years earlier. But Malaysia insisted that Malaysian troops be permitted to remain in Singapore. Singapore’s future Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew later said that Malaysia’s insistence “stiffened our resolve” to “build up the Singapore Armed Forces”. The…
In Western collective memory, Moscow, Peking, Pyongyang, Havana and Hanoi are remembered as centres of socialist revolution during the tense decades of the Cold War. Yet another Asian capital is often overlooked: Jakarta. After all, Indonesia was home to the largest non-ruling communist party in the world, and the country’s left-nationalist President Sukarno was a…
V Vinicchayakul, the pen-name of Vinita Diteeyont, is prolific by any measure, reportedly with more than one hundred novels under her belt, many adapted for television and film. Only a very few have made it into English; had not she been championed by translator Lucy Srisuphapreeda, perhaps none would have been.
Wars are always replete with tragedies, and the World War II Battle of Manila, fought between 3 February and 3 March 1945, is one of history’s greatest tragedies. An entire city was destroyed, millions of people were made homeless, and more than 100,000 civilians were killed as Allied forces liberated the Philippine capital from Japanese…
I spend nearly half the year in Indonesia, so the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival always feels like a homecoming, the one place I can sit with local authors, journalists and historians, swap ideas about books and the country’s latest turns, and catch up with friends I only see once a year.
Think of Cold War communist insurgency and guerilla warfare might well spring to mind. Sometimes it worked, building from the hinterlands to capture the capital: see Cuba. Sometimes it failed: see Che in Bolivia. And sometimes the revolutionaries remained stuck in the wild, undefeated but unable to seize the state.
Malay folklore is peopled—if that’s the right word—with a variety of supernatural beings, ghosts, and spirits, which reflect cultural anxieties, historical beliefs, and the blending of animistic traditions with Islamic, Indian and Chinese influences. Given this tradition has been a fundamental part of local storytelling for centuries, it’s unsurprising that horror is a staple of…
Genevieve Yang, the protagonist of Jemimah Wei’s debut novel The Original Daughter works a dead-end job in Singapore, living in the shadow of her adopted younger sister, Arin, a rising movie star. Genevieve’s dying mother asks her to call Arin; Genevieve refuses.
The recent documentary, The Sea is Our Home immerses viewers in the vibrant yet precarious world of the Bajau Laut, whose stilt houses rise above the turquoise waters of Sabah’s east coast. While this film is centered on the sea nomads of Malaysia, the Bajau Laut can also be found in aquatic settlements across coastal…
Although no longer as true as it was, East Asian trade in the early-modern period is often presented from the perspective of one more Western nation or another: the Spain’s Manila Galleon trade, the Portuguese spice trade and unique base in Macau, the Dutch East India Company, and latterly, the British via Canton and Hong…
On a recent warm evening in August, I settled into the lush gardens of the Agung Rai Museum of Art in Ubud, in Bali’s hill country, for screenings of two remarkable films: “Island of Demons” from 1933 and “Headhunters of Borneo” from 1936. Directed by Friedrich Dalsheim with Victor Baron von Plessen and, for the…
This book tells the inside story of how Singapore defied considerable odds to develop a dynamic economy and cohesive society in the 60 years since the city-state’s independence. Through in-depth interviews with some of the nation’s most influential leaders—Abdullah Tarmugi, Chan Sek Keong, Cheong Koon Hean, Halimah Yacob, Peter Ho, Khaw Boon Wan, Lim Siong…
Bornean-Australian novelist, playwright, poet, rapper and visual artist Omar Musa comes with a bit of a pedigree. His debut novel Here Come the Dogs was long-listed for the International Dublin Literary Award and for the Miles Franklin Award. He was named one of the Sydney Morning Herald’s Young Novelists of the Year in 2015.
Nine years in the making, Jemimah Wei’s debut novel is a complicated story of two sisters who found and lost each other amidst the busy, urban, competitive island of Singapore. It provides a glimpse of Singapore without the glitz and glamour, a Singapore in which the expectation of excellence drives a wedge through even the…