Home | Books By Year | Books from 1976


Scorpion Orchid

Buy Scorpion Orchid now from Amazon

First, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the book. And once you've experienced the book, tell everyone what you thought about it.

Wikipedia article


'Scorpion Orchid' is a novel by Malaysian author Lloyd Fernando, first published by Heinemann Educational Books (Asia) in 1976 under the Writing in Asia Series. The novel is set in Singapore in the 1950s.Chiu, M. Y. "Imagining a Nation: Lloyd Fernando's 'Scorpion Orchid' and National Identity" in 'New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies 5', 2 (December, 2003): p. 48 It was re-published by Epigram Books in September 2011 under the Singapore Classics Series.

Plot summary



The plot entwines four young men of differing ethnic make-up: Santinathan is a Tamil, Guan Kheng a Chinese, Sabran a Malay and Peter D'Almeida a Eurasian. The four of them were former schoolmates and now attends the Singapore university, all in their third year. The story follows them as they become embroiled with the racial riots in Singapore during the 1950s. A distinctive feature of 'Scorpion Orchid' lies in fourteen italicized passages of varying length, drawn from traditional Malayan texts and interwoven into the narrative.

Themes



'Scorpion Orchid' highlights the racial conflicts in Singapore which was cause for its lack of attention upon release. In a political sense, the novel can be read as a critique on state propagated multicultural pluralism reflected in the differences on race and culture that eventually separated four main characters. Akin to this is the exploration of identity that each of the young men challenge through, facing questions on their ethnicity and its place on their lives.

Being a text charged with meaning, the use of English to narrate 'Scorpion Orchid' is used to highlight the fallacy of its neutrality amongst the historical colonial conflict within the storyline. As a foreign language, its use allowed Fernando to put together and later complicate the relationships of his "in-between culture" characters.

References



Category:Singaporean novels

Category:1976 novels

Category:Novels set in Singapore

Buy Scorpion Orchid now from Amazon

<-- Return to books from 1976



This work is released under CC-BY-SA. Some or all of this content attributed to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=856212768.