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ARTS&LEISURE
If you’re looking for a good
read this month, here are our
thoughts on a selection of
recent releases.
PAGE
October14
Smokescreen
Khaled Talib
Signal Press | 331 pages
This extraordinary thriller starts
in a Cairo souk, where the
disguised Ambassador of the US
to Singapore and the mysterious
old man X hold a covert meeting
about a supposed Israeli plot
to assassinate the Israeli Prime
Minister during his approaching
official visit to Singapore.
Who’s their inside man? One
Chan Boon Seng, smilingly villainous chief protocol officer
of the Singapore Ministry of Foreign Affairs. To take the rap
for the assassination, he’s singled out Eurasian Jet West, a
local lifestyle magazine editor and modest watch-collector
who’s had the temerity to apply for a licence to publish an
independent newspaper. (“Jet knew that women dug his
good looks.” And his first appearance is in a mauve jacket.
Yes, mauve.)
Complete with a Bond-style string of attractive female
characters, only a couple of whom manage to survive
the ingeniously murderous exploits of Chan’s tame killer,
the schizophrenic psychopath Fung, the plot zings from
Singapore to the Israeli desert and Jerusalem’s old Muslim
quarter, Buenos Aires, South Australia’s Murray River, Chan’s
Indonesian island fortress Pulau Jakaba, and perhaps a
couple more.
It’s enjoyable to follow the plucky Jet evading capture in
various familiar places, be it in his flashy black Miata, atop a
stolen police bike or on foot. He drops into a Tourism Board
soirée at Sands Sky Park, (almost) dines at the Alkaff Mansion,
finds temporary sanctuary in St Andrew’s Cathedral belfry
during a blistering action sequence through the colonial
district, and visits an underground Chinatown opium den run
by a Brummie* ex-broker-turned-passport-forger.
Jake Needham, author of two novels set in the police and
security services of Singapore, says
Smokescreen
is “nearer
to the truth of that closely controlled little country than you
might believe”, and that it’s “a gripping and creepy tale of how
governments can rig the way we all see the world”.
However true that may be, this could be a cracker of a
movie, one to rival
Saint Jack
. Would permission be granted,
this time?
* Native of Birmingham, England.
Verne Maree
The Forbidden
Game – Golf
and the Chinese
Dream
Dan Washburn
Oneworld | 320 pages
I played golf in China
for the first time back in
2001, next to the Ming
Tombs on the outskirts
of Beijing. As we drove
along the laneway to the
clubhouse, half a dozen
villagers leapt out from
behind trees and approached the car. They were
wielding second-hand golf balls that they’d found in the
surrounding vegetation andwere selling in a clandestine
fashion. We bought a dozen or so, and promptly hit them
straight back into the out-of-bounds areas, where they
would be collected again, and sold again.
At the time, the course we played on was one of
only a tiny handful in the country. And it was empty.
Yet golf, long considered taboo in China because of its
bourgeois connotations, was about to boom. Hundreds
of new courses would soon open up across the
country, and more and more locals would seize upon
the opportunities presented by this growth to seek their
fortunes – and not just by selling second-hand balls.
It’s this boom – and more than a few subsequent
busts – that Dan Washburn documents in his
fascinating account. The book revolves around the
stories of three vastly different men: Wang, who finds
his lychee farm under threat from a massive golf course
development; Martin, an American course construction
manager who unexpectedly winds up at the forefront
of China’s golf scene; and Zhou, a peasant whose
life follows a bizarre trajectory from security guard to
professional golfer.
You don’t have to be a fan of golf to enjoy the book,
because it’s about so much more: rural land rights,
corruption, rich versus poor, the environment, and
people pursuing dreams. In short, Washburn uses the
sport as a window to shed light on all the big issues
that China has faced in its meteoric rise.
Shamus Sillar