Playing For Malaya

A stunning personal account of a Eurasian family living in Malaya during WWII.

During World War II, agents of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) infiltrated Japanese-occupied Malaya. There they worked with Malayan guerrilla groups, including the communist-sponsored Malayan Peoples Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA), regarded as the precursor of the communist insurgent army of the Malayan Emergency. This book traces the development of SOE's Malayan operations, and analyses the interactions between SOE and the various guerrilla groups. It explores the reasons for and the extent of Malay disillusionment with Japanese rule, and demonstrates how guerrilla service acted as a training ground for some later Malay leaders of the independent nation. However, the reports written about the MPAJA by SOE operatives just after the war failed to draw out the likely future threat posed by the communists to the returning colonial administration. Rebecca Kenneison shows that the British possessed a wealth of local information, but failed to convert it into active intelligence in the period prior to the Malayan Emergency. In doing so she provides new insights into the impact of SOE on Malayan politics, the nature of Malayan communism's challenge to colonial rule, and British post-war intelligence in Malaya.

‘A song, so old and yet still famous’ is a Malay expression of admiration for an exotic singing style, a musical contemplation on the beauty of nature, God, and love. The ghazal exists in manifold cultures all over Asia, Africa, and Southern Europe, and is intimately connected to Islam and its periphery. In each region, ghazals have been shaped into other expressions using imported features and transforming them into ‘local art’. In the Malay world, ghazals come in various shapes and with different meanings. ‘The song, so old’ is the song that came before the proliferation of mass media. The first ghazals that were heard in the Malay world might have been those ghazals performed by Hindustani musicians traveling in Southeast Asia. However, later on, the ghazal’s development was additionally triggered by mass media, with technological progress enhancing change in urban entertainment and introducing new sources of further adaptations. In this context, the second half line of the lyrics mentioned, ‘and yet still famous’, means that despite being old, the song is highly regarded as an art in itself. Malay ghazals are still attractive and musically demanding. They were traditionally not performed for mass appeal, but, rather, for a small knowledgeable audience that valued musical refinement and taste.

"The book, using a small group of left-wing student activists as a prism, explores the complex politics that underpinned the making of nation-states in Singapore and Malaysia after World War Two. While most works have viewed the period in terms of political contestation groups, the book demonstrates how it is better understood as involving a shared modernist project framed by British-planned decolonization. This pursuit of nationalist modernity was characterized by an optimism to replace the colonial system with a new state and mobilize the people into a new relationship with the state, according them new responsibilities as well as new rights. This book, based on student writings, official documents and oral history interviews, brings to life various modernist strands - liberal-democratic, ethnic-communal, and Fabian and Marxist socialist - seeking to determine the form of post-colonial Malaya. It uncovers a hitherto little-seen world where the meanings of loud slogans were fluid, vague and deeply contested. This world also comprised as much convergence between the groups as conflict, including collaboration between the Socialist Club and other political and student groups which were once its rivals, while its main ally eventually became its nemesis"--Publisher's description.

Adnan Ariffin was born at the turning of the tide on a remote seaside town of Port Dickson, Malaysia and grew up with Malays, Chinese and Indians learning to speak some of their languages. He left the seaside town for the bright lights of Kuala Lumpur, and later other towns in east and west coast of Malaysia where he got the inspiration to write his first historical fiction novel in between drinking coffee at Starbucks and watching the demanding local patrons. He now lives in a small apartment on a hill hidden by lush greeneries with his wife and an old terrapine. When not writing bestselling novels, he likes to party with rock stars and dance the tango under a full moon, letting out the occasional scream.

Through attending games and talking to players, coaches, media and fans from the past and the present, seasoned football correspondent John Duerden charts the history of the rivalry in the past, captures a snapshot of the rivalry as it is and casts a look at the future. It won't be just about the big games but about players from one country that played in another and the recent sojourn of Lions XII in Malaysia and Harimau Muda in the S-League. From meetings between the two national teams and clubs to tales from the times when they both sent teams to compete in the other’s league, Lions and Tigers describes how Singapore and Malaysia feel about each other and how it all looks to an outsider between the two countries with comments from both nations—from coaches, players and key stakeholders, and also journalists and fans of the beautiful game.