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Seasons of Darkness

"I will not be forgottened "
says protagonist in


The powerful, explosive, disturbing story of Singapore that explores the dilemma of the Eurasian

Author Wilfred Hamilton-Shimmen's first novel explores the trauma of a first-generation British-descent Eurasian who is born, raised and striving in his island-home but who perceives that he isn't regarded as being part of the fabric of his society.

But he refuses to become a 'tragedy of history'.

He contends there is a glass ceiling for the Eurasian in today's Singapore - he may aspire to a certain level of society but the 'giddy heights' of power and finance are taboo. (In his recollection only two Eurasians ever rose politically - one was the original Speaker of Parliament, the other became a Government minister, and there has been no one ever since).

Seasons of Darkness also explores the dilemma of the progency of the descendants of inter-marriages between White colonialists and Asian women now that the European colonial has departed East and South-East Asia forever and the 'New" nations of the East and SE Asia head into the future centuries.

THIS MUST-READ BOOK WILL BE HARD TO PUT DOWN

Synopsis

Anyone who is familiar with East Asia, (the Far East), is aware of the highly-successful 'economic miracle' that is the island Singapore. This explosive, disturbing story is a facet of the many-sided face of the former Malay island, on the brink of the Riau Archipelago, that the world would have no inkling of.

This is the story of a British-descent Eurasian -- born, raised and striving in his island-home, perceiving that he isn't regarded as part of the fabric of his country, and experiencing rejection through racial bigotry, not only during the former British colonial era but even after independence
.
Just because he is Eurasian, a 'mixture' of White and Asian. While the other racial 'mixes' of Chinese-Malay, Malay-Indian and Indian-Chinese appear to suffer no disadvantages.

The Eurasian protagonist sees a Singapore heading into the 21st Century with the genuine multi-racial flavour of his society, (which had been created by Stamford Raffles and the colonial administrators after him), becoming a thing of the past. With the 'Overseas Chinese' kicked out of Vietnam and other 'Overseas Chinese' in the respective South East Asia societies in the region having to either assimilate or leave, the Chinese-dominant Singapore Government has created a 'Sino environment' on Singapore to attract ethnic-Chinese from abroad to settle in his island-home, while Eurasians like him are made to feel like outcasts.

He 'witnesses' the transformation of his island into a Sino-society - from place-names, ensuring that ethnic-Chinese hold key-posts in government, playing up the use of Mandarin-Chinese, the switching of dialect-names to Hanyu-Pinyin, to even the attempt to rewrite Singapore's Malay history to intimate that the island has always had a 'Chinese-connection', and the ignoring of Singapore's Malay history and connection.

Finally in his forties he decides to give up being a "second-class Singaporean" of mixed descent to become English, reclaims his English heritage which he had always submerged because very early in life he had chosen to identify with Singapore but has since realised that he had made an error of judgement.
Singapore is no longer his multi-racial home.

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