The Singapore Grip: J. Farrell

'For a while he watched the butterflies which still swooped and fluttered in this little glade, impervious to the bombs that had fallen round about.'
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 and a dying way of life, The Singapore Grip is a modern classic from a Booker prize-winning author.