Seasons of darkness: A story of Singapore Wilfred Hamilton-Shimmen

Anyone who is familiar with East Asia, (the Far East), is aware of the highly-successful 'economic miracle' that is the island Singapore. But 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 Asian 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, I 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.