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Literary greats have long visited Singapore, fascinated by its culture and history. Explore the experiences of writers like Anton Chekhov, Rabindranath Tagore, Noël Coward, Isabella Bird, Pablo Neruda and Joseph Conrad, among others, and discover how Singapore remained a lasting part of their creative imagination.
“A fascinating and well-documented literary tour. Nadel is an expert biographer and a masterful storyteller who views Singapore as ‘a gateway, a beginning, a point of origin’ for the literary imagination."
—Professor Michael Earley, former Dean, Faculty of Performing Arts, LASALLE College of the Arts

“Film stars and journalists, botanists and spies—Singapore Flings gathers in one place an impressively eclectic cast of the city’s literary visitors. Ira Nadel narrates these journeys with a learned ease, documenting memorable moments and personal discoveries alongside these travellers’ peculiar foible sand fumbles. Singapore Flings bears witness to the city’s persistent and often misunderstood attraction to outsiders, while recalling how trips to this singular place can lead to onward connections in the authors’ imaginations. These literary travellers trade in some of the superficial impressions that such brief exposures entail, and yet they occasionally stumble on that flash of revelation that is only possible from an outsider’s oblique point of view. Peppered with historical curiosities and insights, Singapore Flings itself makes for lively travel reading, whether the reader remains at home or away—with or without the requisite gin sling in hand.”
—Kevin Riordan, Assistant Professor at Nanyang Technological University
Ira Nadel is a Professor of English at the University of British Columbia, Canada. He has lectured throughout Europe, North America and Southeast Asia and has taught at Nanyang Technical University, Singapore and the University of Singapore. His publications include Biography: Fiction, Fact & Form and Modernism’s Second Act: A Cultural Narrative. He has also written biographies on Leonard Cohen, Tom Stoppard, David Mamet and Philip Roth.

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Singapore Flings: Literary Stopovers from Chekhov to Tagore