How a day’s excursion led to three best-selling novels.
The inspiration for my latest novel A Painter in Penang, like most of my books, starts with location.
In 2019 I went on a four-month round-the-world cruise. I started out assuming I would write during the voyage. I’d just delivered a manuscript to my publisher and had started to write a sequel but couldn’t focus and had, for the first time after nine novels, no desire to hammer away at my laptop. I decided to give myself a break and just do lots of reading and enjoy the places I was visiting. Fellow passengers who knew I was a writer would ask me whether the fascinating places we were seeing were inspiring me. While I loved so many of them, alas, I still had no urge to write.
About three months into the cruise we visited Singapore and Malaysia. I’d been to Singapore twice before and hadn’t particularly liked it, but this time it was different and I really loved the place with its mixture of soaring new architectural wonders, the quaintness of Chinatown and Little India, the pleasures of the botanical gardens, and the Singapore Slings at Raffles. Stopping then in Selangor to visit a guest house in the countryside and a sultan’s palace, the weather changed from torrential rain to blistering sunshine and back again. I became fascinated by this country where sadly much of the native jungle, once home to orangutans, is now endless spreads of palm oil plantations. I was interested in its odd political structure – a federation of royal states and one of the few remaining elective monarchies in the world – the sultans choose the King of Malaysia from among themselves by vote.
Buddist Temple Penang
A day later we arrived at Penang where I did a brief tour of the island and visited some temples in beautiful George Town, now a UNESCO world heritage site. There was something about the place – indeed Malaysia as a whole, that kept me thinking about it – even though I was still not writing. I loved the colourful Buddhist and Daoist temples, the lush green of the island, the clear blue sea of the straits, and the distant hills of Kedah. As we sailed away, I wished I’d had longer to spend there.
On we voyaged to Thailand, India, and the Middle East, and it was only as we entered the Mediterranean on the home leg to England that I got a sudden urge to write. And that urge was to write about Penang. That first book, in what has turned into a series of three, was well underway by the time we docked in England. I had found my characters and – like many of my books, I’d decided to set it in a time that fascinates me – the dying days of the British empire and among the British expats who were living the self-indulgent lives of lotus eaters. I began researching life in Penang in the 30s and up to the invasion of the Japanese horrified at the way the British community and the government there blindly refused to acknowledge the Japanese threat – partying on in the sunshine as the enemy drew closer and as the rest of Britain back home were facing up to the blitzkrieg and the constraints of rationing. The Pearl of Penang – is the story of Evie who takes a wild chance on her future by travelling to Penang to marry a man she barely knows.
Soon after, Prisoner from Penang followed – this time the story of Evie’s friend Mary, captured and interned by the Japanese in Sumatra after the Fall of Singapore. By now, my readers were telling me they loved the island locations, the dramatic wartime events and the characters. Writing a third book was the obvious conclusion.
It is a surprise that such a brief visit to a small island should spark three books. But there is something about Penang that truly captured my imagination. It is beautiful, sitting just a short distance off the coast of the Malay peninsula. Nowadays it’s been heavily developed with high rise hotels and apartments, but it still retains a tropical island magic. First of all, there is George Town with its fascinating colonial buildings, its Chinese shop-houses, and brightly painted temples. The island offers views across to the peaks of Kedah from the mountainous centre, Penang Hill, which has a funicular railway and spectacular views at the top. Many of the buildings and places mentioned in A Painter in Penang are unchanged – although the view now includes the Chinese-funded road bridge over the straits to the peninsula as well as numerous skyscrapers, built on reclaimed land.
The historical inspiration for A Painter in Penang came from my growing awareness of what happened in Malaysia (still then known as Malaya) after the war. The Malayan Emergency was a civil war in all but name and claimed around ten thousand lives on all sides including the civilian population.
Nowadays little is remembered of this conflict which in many ways was a precursor to the Vietnam War and offered lessons which were sadly ignored. What was a civil war in all but name lasted twelve years, ending in 1960. The first significant step in the long and bloody struggle was the killing of three British rubber planters on the morning of 16th June 1948.
I decided A Painter in Penang would be set against the backdrop of the first six months of the Emergency in 1948. As I wanted each book in the series to be able to stand alone, I needed a new main character (although Evie of The Pearl of Penang and Mary of Prisoner from Penang do feature). My new heroine is Jasmine Barrington, Evie’s sixteen-year-old stepdaughter who is staying for an extended period with Evie’s friend Mary and her husband on their rubber plantation on Penang.
A Painter in Penang is also inspired by own interest in painting. I had once before had a main character who paints (Ginnie in Kurinji Flowers) but this time I wanted the love of art to be the most significant driver in Jasmine’s life. It was interesting to think about the process of painting and how to bring that alive on the page. And what an inspiring place to paint.
I didn’t set out to write about this part of the world and certainly did not envisage becoming so fascinated by the history of the Malayan Emergency. Nor did I expect a brief visit to Penang to spark my imagination enough to inspire three books. I intended to go back to the island while writing The Pearl of Penang but couldn’t make the timings work. I would have loved to do so while writing A Painter in Penang – but this was my Lockdown book so that was out of the question. I had to settle for going back in my imagination. Penang was my escape from Covid-19 and the four walls of my home. I suspect the success of the books is partly down to the fact that many readers are also looking for vicarious travel adventures. I hope I may have tempted you to join them.
Sixteen-year-old
Jasmine Barrington hates everything about living in Kenya and longs to return
to the island of Penang in British colonial Malaya where she was born.
Expulsion from her Nairobi convent school offers a welcome escape – the chance
to stay with her parents’ friends, Mary and Reggie Hyde-Underwood on their
Penang rubber estate.
But
this is 1948 and communist insurgents are embarking on a reign of terror in
what becomes the Malayan Emergency. Jasmine goes through testing experiences –
confronting heartache, a shocking past secret, and danger. Throughout it all,
the one constant in her life is her passion for painting.
From the international best-selling and award-winning author of The Pearl of Penang, this is a dramatic coming of age story, set against the backdrop of a tropical paradise torn apart by civil war.
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