5 - Singapore, 1937-1942

Summary

When The Singapore Grip was published in September 1978, a fledgling novelist called Timothy Mo had this to say about Farrell's longest and most ambitious novel to date:

The novel may well be Farrell's private attempt at War and Peace. It is both a hilarious picture of the humanely ludicrous and an acute historical analysis, examining the old imperialism at its moment of dissolution in the Far East and considering the difficulties of behaving decently within that order.

In dealing with events leading up to the fall of the colony of Singapore to Japanese forces in February 1942, Farrell addresses an historical affair which was, not only, one of Britain's greatest disasters of the Second World War but also signalled the beginning of the end of British colonial influence in South and East Asia. As befits such an experience, perhaps, Farrell's canvas is substantial: the novel runs to seventy-five chapters and ranges, in the manner of an epic film, over the fortunes of a sizeable cast of characters. In comparison with the other novels in the Empire Trilogy, The Singapore Grip describes a wider theatre of action: the cramped confines of the Majestic hotel or the cantonment at Krishnapur have expanded to embrace the city of Singapore, which gradually finds itself besieged by the Japanese forces, overwhelmed by refugees fleeing the hostilities in the Malayan peninsula, and, like the Majestic, is in flames by the end of the novel.

As one might expect, The Singapore Grip bears many of the hallmarks of Farrell's historical fiction: a besieged colonial community; the decline of colonial authority and understanding; an acerbic, comical rendering of those ‘undergoing’ history, bewildered by the changes which they struggle to command and control. Yet in many ways The Singapore Grip is perhaps Farrell's most conventional historical novel. This is partly due, paradoxically, to the novel's ambitious scope. In contrast to his approach in Troubles and The Siege of Krishnapur, leading historical figures are not obliquely referenced but appear as important characters (such as Lieutenant General Arthur Percival, the British commander in the region), while the major historical incidents explored in the novel are not displaced from the primary theatre of action but impact directly upon the characters and the city.