Last quadrant

by Meira Chand

Book by Chand, Meira

194 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Meira Chand is of Indian-Swiss parentage and was born and educated in London at Putney High School. She studied art at St. Martin’s School of Art and later specialised in textile design at Hammersmith Art School. In 1962 she left England to settle in Japan with her Indian husband. Although she spent several years in India in the early 1970s, she afterwards returned again to live in Japan. In 1997 she moved to Singapore, where she currently lives.

The themes of Meira Chand’s novels explore the search for identity and belonging. Five of her novels, The Gossamer Fly, Last Quadrant, The Bonsai Tree, The Painted Cage and A Choice of Evils, are all set in Japan. Contemporary India is the location of House of the Sun that, in 1990, was adapted for the stage in London where it had a successful run at Theatre Royal Stratford East. Also set in India, but in Calcutta during the early days of the Raj, A Far Horizon considers the notorious story of the Black Hole of Calcutta. Her new novel, A Different Sky takes place against the backdrop of colonial pre-Independence Singapore. The book examines an era that includes the Second World War and the subsequent Japanese occupation of Singapore, and also the rise of post-war nationalism in Malaya.

Meira Chand is an associate member of the Centre for the Arts, National University of Singapore and has been Chairperson for the Commonwealth Writers Prize for the region of South East Asia and South Pacific. She is involved in several programmes in Singapore to encourage and mentor young writers and to raise awareness in the country to the pleasures of reading. She was most recently writer in residence at Mansfield College, Oxford and also at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia.

Reviews

[C.A. Simonsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

An orphanage setting in Kobe, Japan. Just as the reader becomes acquainted with the story's primary characters and their personal struggles, a typhoon and tsunami wallop the city.

Reading Last Quadrant, I was reminded of Hugh MacLennan's Barometer Rising, published some forty years earlier. In both novels, the narrative is suddenly interrupted by physical catastrophe. In both cases, the reader is left wondering: Who will be injured? Who might be killed? How will the natural disaster (or man-made disaster) affect the characters' feelings and futures?

Overall, a worthwhile read.

[XR · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Last Quadrant is about the social circles of British expatriates in modern day Japan, and how these existing social boundaries shift and interact when a typhoon occurs.

Chand brings Japan to life with her vivid, lush writing that makes some scenes feel as if they were unfolding on a television screen. There are also plenty of nuggets of historical and cultural information that will delight readers in search of historical versimilitude. Chand also introduces a multifaceted cast of characters to illustrate the layers of nuance even within the expatriate community. It was quite an effort for me to familiarize myself with the number of characters introduced in Part 1, but I was glad I made the effort when the pace picked up in the later parts. Chand is skilled at clearly signposting where the story is going in a way that stands out even through the layers of descriptive detail. The plot is also tightly constructed, which kept me turning the pages quickly.

I would recommend this book for anyone interested in immersing themselves in a specific slice of history, as well as those interested in exploring how the natural world interacts with our social and cultural structures.

Disclaimer: I read and reviewed this book for a session where our writing group invited Meira for a discussion/Q&A.

[Alun]

wud like to read and re-read