This is a New York Review Book
Published by The New York Review of Books
435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014
www.nyrb.com
Copyright © 1978 by James G. Farrell
Introduction copyright © 1999 by Derek Mahon, adapted from the foreword
to J. G. Farrell: The Making of a Writer by Lavinia Greacen (Bloomsbury, 1999)
and used by kind permission of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Farrell, J. G. (James Gordon), 1935–
The Singapore grip / by J. G. Farrell ; introduction by Derek Mahon.
p. cm. — (New York Review Books classics)
1. Singapore—History—Siege, 1942—Fiction. 2. Rubber industry and trade—
Fiction. 3. British—Singapore—Fiction. 4. Strikes and lockouts—Fiction.
5. Sieges—Fiction. I. Title. II. Series.
PR6056.A75S585 2005
823'.914—dc22
2004030522
Biographical Notes
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.
* * *
JOHN BANVILLE was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945. He is the author of twelve novels, including The Book of Evidence, which was short-listed for the 1989 Booker Prize, The Untouchable, and Eclipse.
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.
PANKAJ MISHRA was born in North India in 1969 and now lives in London and India. He is the author of The Romantics, winner of the Los Angeles Times’s Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, and a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, Granta, and the Times Literary Supplement.
The Empire Trilogy by J.G. Farrell
eISBN : 978-1-59017-476-0
v1.0
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The Empire Trilogy Page 156
