The Singapore Grip

NOW A MAJOR ITV DRAMA, THE SINGAPORE GRIP IS A MODERN CLASSIC FROM THE BOOKER-PRIZE WINNING J.G. FARRELL ''Brilliant, richly absurd, melancholy'' Observer ''Enjoyable on many different levels'' Sunday Times ''One of the most outstanding novelists of his generation'' Spectator Singapore, 1939: Walter Blackett, ruthless rubber merchant, is head of British Singapore''s oldest and most powerful firm. And his family''s prosperous world of tennis parties, cocktails and deferential servants seems unchanging. No one suspects it - but this world is poised on the edge of the abyss. This is the eve of the Fall of Singapore. A love story and a war story, a tragicomic tale of a city under siege and a dying way of life, The Singapore Grip is a modern classic. ''A narrative of exceptional imagination and scope'' Newsweek ''A fine piece of work, informative, funny tragic. One of those novels that present a whole world for the reader to inhabit'' Margaret Drabble '' No writer has swallowed all of Singapore with the verve and wit of the late J.G. Farrell'' Time ''His brilliant of style places him beside such masters of the modern novel as Patrick White and Saul Bellow'' Olivia Manning