Novel
Scorpion Orchid
Lloyd Fernando · 1976
Synopsis
In Singapore, in the fifties, four former schoolmates who have become third-year university students: Sabran the Malay, Santinathan the Tamil, Guan Kheng the Chinese and Peter D'Almeida the Eurasian. Their friendship is put to the test when a riot directed against the British shakes the city and tensions between the communities rise, forcing each to ask where he belongs.
Context
The novel appeared in 1976 from Heinemann, in Kuala Lumpur, in the Writing in Asia series. Fourteen passages in italics, drawn from traditional Malay texts and colonial sources, are interspersed in the narrative. The author said he had put into it the incompatibility of his colonial education with the idea of a society united across all races. Its subject drew little attention on publication; reissued in Singapore in 2011 in a series of classics, it is regarded as one of the first Malaysian novels in English.
Who it is for
A novel in English, short and polyphonic, which assumes one knows that Singapore and Malaysia still formed a single colonial entity; it does not exist in French.
Prizes and reception
It has become a study text for Malaysian and Singaporean literatures in English, often discussed by academic critics.
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