The Singapore Grip (New York Review Books Classics Series) FROM THE PUBLISHER
Singapore, 1939: life on the eve of World War II just isn't what it used to be for Walter Blackett, head of British Singapore's oldest and most powerful firm. No matter how forcefully the police break one strike, the natives go on strike somewhere else. His daughter keeps entangling herself with the most unsuitable beaus, while her intended match, the son of Blackett's partner, is an idealistic sympathizer with the League of Nations and a vegetarian. Business may be booming - what with the war in Europe, the Allies are desperate for rubber and helpless to resist Blackett's price-fixing and market manipulation. But something is wrong. No one suspects that the world of the British Empire - of fixed boundaries between classes and nations - is about to come to a terrible end. The Singapore Grip completes the classic historical "Empire Trilogy," which also includes Troubles and the Booker Prize-winning The Siege of Krishnapur.
AUTHOR DESCRIPTION
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 my back
door and I'm thinking of turning them into my feudal retainers." On
August 11, Farrell was hit by a wave while fishing and was washed out to
sea. His body was found a month later. A biography of J.G. Farrell, J.G.
Farrell: The Making of a Writer by Lavinia Greacen, was published by
Bloomsbury in 1999.
Derek Mahon was born in Belfast in 1941, studied at Trinity
College, Dublin, and the Sorbonne, and has held journalistic and
academic appointments in London and New York. He has received numerous
awards, including the Irish Times/Aer Lingus Poetry Prize, the Irish
Academy of Letters Award, the Scott Moncrieff and Aristeion
translation prizes, and Lannan and Guggenheim fellowships. His
Collected Poems were published in 1999 and Harbour Lights, a volume of
new poetry, is forthcoming in 2005.
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