Meira Chand

A dazzling novel telling the history of Singapore through the moving stories of three families whose lives become intertwined. Riding a trolley bus through Singapore's crowded Chinatown, ten-year-old Howard and his mother find themselves in the midst of a communist riot. As Howard watches, a British policeman is wounded by the mob. But Howard finds that, instead of horror he feels satisfaction. It is 1927 and in a Singapore still under British colonial rule, opportunities open to local people are few. On the bus with Howard is a young Chinese girl whose fears and frustrations are of a different kind. Born into a wealthy Chinese dynasty, with a grandmother still suffering from bound feet, Mei Lan faces a life of feminine submission if she is unable to break free. In the years to come, the pair will be drawn together, but when war arrives, followed by the brutal Japanese occupation, their sense of self will be thrown into question, and their relationship tested to breaking point. In a novel of breathtaking scope, Meira Chand tells the story of three families caught up in the tumultuous history of Singapore, as it journeys along the long, hard path to independence. From the opportunist Raj Sherma, an Indian immigrant made good, to the young Communist Greta, fighting the imperialists in the 1950s, and from the mixed loyalties of the Eurasian and Chinese communities to the sufferings of British prisoners of war, A Different Sky paints a vivid panorama of Singapore society through the personal struggles and victories of characters the reader will find it hard to forget.

A Different Sky

Orphaned as a child and widowed at thirteen, Sita has always known the shame of being born female in the Indian society. Her life constrained and shaped by the men around her, she could not be more different from her daughter, Amita—a headstrong university professor determined to live life on her own terms. While trying to unravel the mysteries in her mother’s past, Amita encounters a traumatic event that leads her down the path of self-discovery. Unfolding simultaneously, their stories are set against the dramatic sweep of India’s anti-colonial struggle in the 1940s, and move between past and present, from rural India to the chaotic Burmese battlefront where Sita experiences life as a recruit in the Indian National Army to modern-day Singapore. Richly layered and beautifully evocative, Sacred Waters is a compelling exploration of two women’s struggle to assert themselves in male-dominated societies of both the past and the present.

Sacred Waters

Orphaned as a child and widowed at thirteen, Sita has always known the shame of being born female in Indian society. Her life constrained and shaped by the men around her, she could not be more different from her daughter, Amita, a headstrong university professor determined to live life on her own terms. While trying to unravel the mysteries in her mother’s past, Amita encounters a traumatic event that leads her down the path of self-discovery. Unfolding simultaneously, their stories are set against the dramatic sweep of India’s anti-colonial struggle in the 1940s, and move between past and present, from rural India to the chaotic Burmese battlefront where Sita experiences life as a recruit in the Indian National Army, to modern-day Singapore. Richly layered and beautifully evocative, the novel is a compelling exploration of two women’s struggle to assert themselves in male-dominated societies of both the past and the present.

Set in Bengal in 1756, the story traces British interaction with the Indians in the months leading up to the infamous Black Hole of Calcutta incident in which approximately 250 white people were imprisoned by Indian merchants in a tiny room, leaving only 30 alive the next day. We follow the lives of two British leaders of the white community - the Chief Magistrate Holwell and his enemy the governor Drake. Tensions build in the white community and on the other side of the tracks, in the Indian community, mixed-race Sati causes commotion when she becomes possessed by the goddess Kali. Against a vividly created backdrop of dirt, decay and slime from the Hoogly river, Chand shows the shaky foundations of British power and how the British come to realise the extent of their dependence on the indigenous population.

A Far Horizon

Jun Nagai, heir to a prominent Japanese spinning empire, takes his new English wife Kate back to Japan after some time in England absorbing Western technology. This is a marriage his arrogant and powerful mother Itsuko, who controls the family business, finds hard to accept and she sets out to destroy it. Jun, fighting for his independence, is pulled between the two cultures owing loyalty to both. Thrown into a strange and incomprehensible world, where the role of a wife is so different, Kate is soon stripped of all her romantic illusions. Her struggle to retain her individuality and adapt to her new environment after a shattering encounter lead her to work as an interpreter. In a bar she meets Tarnura, a business rival of the Nagais. When escaping from him, Kate finds herself in Kamagasaki, a place she thought could not exist in the modern miracle of Japan. Here she discovers Japan’s race of untouchables, the Burakumin, the gangsters, the destitutes and an ancient area of prostitution like no other in Japan. Her terrifying flight through the red light district – the dustbin of a society in which failure has no place – and her rescue by Father Ota, a Japanese Christian missionary, brings her to a new understanding of the culture she has married into.

The Bonsai Tree

In March Saturn is coming into the House of the Sun. Saturn is strong and will bring trouble. […] Wear a sapphire, then nothing can harm you,” Bhai Sahib, the priest, warns Mrs Hathiramani, reading her horoscope in his temple on the second floor of Sadhbela, a Bombay apartment block. Forty years before, at the time of Partition, the residents of Sadhbela were Hindu refugees from the rival towns of Rohri and Sukkur. In Sadhbela now these Sindhi exiles live as one family, fortunes drastically changed. Before blown out of the House of the Sun in a monsoon squall, the planet has influenced some lives irreversibly. Sham Pumnani, the embezzler, finds a new, unexpected future. His sister, Lakshmi, experiences the worst cruelties of womanhood in a traditional society. Rani Murjani learns to stand up for herself and reach out to a new age. Through it all Mr Hathiramani writes furiously against time, to complete a translation of Shah Abdul Latif, immortal poet of medieval Sind, so that in Sadhbela a proud past and a dying identity will not be entirely forgotten.

House of The Sun

English doctor Eva Kraig has spent her life making a home for abandoned children. Twenty years ago, she herself had adopted the illegitimate, half-American daughter of Kyo, an orphan who had grown up in the home and then turned to prostitution. Now Eva may lose her beloved Akiko, for Kyo — ravaged by time and drink — has returned to claim her grown daughter in the hope that Akiko will support her. As the winds intensify, so do the private struggles of the characters. When the storm abruptly switches course, trapping everyone inside the orphanage, Akiko finds herself stranded with her adoptive mother, the natural mother she has never known and a troubled young American who has fallen in love with her. In the brief calm of the typhoon’s eye, the group leaves the battered orphanage to guide the staff and children to the comparative safety of a wealthy English couple’s concrete house. There they must wait out the violence of the last quadrant — the wildest part of the storm. As the refugees draw together in a fight for survival, their perceptions of themselves and each other take on new dimensions — and the terrible night becomes a turning point for each of them.

Last Qudrant

First published in 1979, Meira Chand's mesmerising, sinister debut is presented in a fresh edition to enchant a new generation of reader.

The Gossamer Fly

Natsuko and her older brother, Riichi, are the children of an English mother and a Japanese father, Frances and Kazuo Akazawa. Living in Japan, Frances still finds the totally different structure of society from her own background almost impossible to accept. She has tried, but now after some years she closes her mind to it all. Kazuo has been patient, but with Frances on the verge of a nervous breakdown the situation becomes impossible. Into the household comes Hiroko, the slatternly maid, free with her favours and soon after she arrives, Frances leaves for England for medical treatment, hoping some time away will heal her. It does not take Hiroko long to start an affair with the long-suffering Kazuo. But he is not careful enough for not only is the precocious Riichi aware of this but also Natsuko. He is able to understand its implications far better than his young sister, a child suddenly flung into the adult world, into a web of desolation and loneliness, without the secure relationship of her mother and with a father who does not understand her. The novel has an unusual and evocative setting, a growing tension that builds up towards a dramatic climax.

Meira Chand

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