Nanyang

by Ian Stewart

Nanyang is a South-East Asian saga of love, tragedy, avarice and brutality. It covers a period of some 200 years in which corrupt colonialists and venal indigenous leaders vied with Chinese immigrants to exploit the region’s natural resources with little regard for the suffering of the rural poor. It was a time that saw the main European powers extend their rivalry from their immediate surroundings to India, South-East Asia and China, where there were strategic and economic prizes to be won.

Nanyang is the story of a young Chinese woman, who is snatched from a Fujian village by a Dutch raiding party and transported to Java, her brother, who is determined to rescue her, and their descendants. Together with protagonists from England, Holland, France and other countries, they are caught up in historical events in which notable English, Dutch and Javanese figures play their real-life roles.

Genres: Historical Fiction

700 pages, Paperback

First published December 22, 2011

About the author

I was born in New Zealand and began my journalism career on The New Zealand Herald.
I was a foreign correspondent in Asia for 30 years, which included fifteen years reporting for The New York Times with Hong Kong as my base.
I had earlier been a Reuters correspondent, working for the agency in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Indonesia.
I began writing fiction when I was a young journalist in Australia and had two short stories published.
My first success with a novel was The Peking Payoff, which was published in hard cover in 1975 by Macmillan Inc in New York and in paperback by Hamlyn. Hamlyn subsequently published The Seizing Of Singapore, Deadline In Jakarta and An H-Bomb For Alice.
In 1988, I self-published Reunion, also a novel.
Following my ten years as a freelance correspondent, from 1991 to 2001, based first in Singapore and then Malaysia, I wrote The Mahathir Legacy, a non-fiction work, which was published in Australia in 2003 by Allen & Unwin.
My epic Asian saga, Nanyang – published as both an Amazon (Kindle) eBook and as a CreateSpace) paperback – reflects my interest in the history of East Asia, where I have spent so much of my adult life, and the emigration of Chinese to South-East Asia, among them the ancestors of my wife Truus The Tiang Nio.
For the eBook see:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006PHIPU4
For the paperback see:
http://www.amazon.com/Nanyang-Mr-Ian-...
I have also more recently published two more books of the action/adventure genre,The Unintentional Jihadi.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008d7EHI7O
and The Lust of Comrade Lu.
http://www.amazon.com/Lust-Comrade-Lu...-
ebook/dp/B00IWXP3H2/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
It is very relevant to current relations between Hong Kong and Beijing.

I have begun republishing some earlier works as eBooks.
The first was Reunion. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008YVLPNI
The second was The Peking Payoff
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009HPE0T6
The latest is The Seizing Of Singapore
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ALQL39K
For further information about me, see my blog: http://iangstewart.typepad.com/my_weblog

Reviews

[Nae · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to admit that I really know very little about the occupation of Java by the Dutch. I had no idea that Java had this colorful of a history or that the Chinese had who immigrated there for a variety of reasons played such a large part in the history. For the most part it reads easily, keeps my interest, even if some areas of battles at sea do sort of bog down a bit, but I do admire the way this author worked so much darn historical fact into this book without boring the pants off me. Some parts, like when relating the rather convoluted history of the native javanese royal families and the internecine infighting, have been a little hard for me to follow, but that may be mostly because of the language itself and the spellings of the names are something I have never really encountered before, making it harder to retain them and forcing me to go back and reread passages to make sure I am still following the same person and not someone with a similar sounding name. Other than that I are thoroughly enjoying this one and am really glad I came across the title in one of the historical fiction group threads here.

[Charles van Buren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Informative historical novel

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This review is from: Nanyang (Kindle Edition)

For a novel, this book contains an enormous amount of information about The Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia); Singapore; The Dutch East India Company; Dutch colonial policy; the indigenous population of the Indies; the Chinese who settled in the South West Pacific; The British Honourable East India Company; a large number of real people who were involved with these matters and several other things. If you have any curiosity about any of these from the late 1500's thru the 1800's this book should be of interest. The novel also follows several generations of interconnected fictional families in intricate detail. So much detail that it and the novel's length can make reading somewhat involved. The families and family members get along together far too well to be completely believable, otherwise, the plot rings true. There is plenty of action and romance, but again, a lot of detail.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wrote a review on Amazon. I give this book three stars because grammatical errors hindered my reading as did the number of names that were not essential to the story. I spent a lot of time on Google Earth and Wikipedia finding what I could about people and places. The mechanics of good writing were not as good as they should have been. Negativity aside, I enjoyed reading this book and recommend it to fellow readers.

This book covers a two hundred year period in the East Indies, particularly Java. The author turns history into a wonderful story using real and imagined characters. It is a story of the Dutch and the English fighting for good trade and good ports in the East Indies. How the natives, the forcefully imported Chinese, the English and the Dutch live together turns into a real melting pot of society and a hot bed for Western civilization. This book is reminiscent of TAI PAN where the English founded Hong Kong. This author stops at the founding of Singapore, but I hope he does his magic with historical fiction again. Thank you, Mr. Stewart, for a very good read.

I am updating to four stars. Three stars might cause some readers to overlook this book. The book is too good for that to happen.

[Geoff Woodland · Rating 4 out of 5]

At around 650 pp Nanyang is a solid book, and value for money. The detail of the history surrounding a particular event in which a character becomes involved is engrossing. My hobby is Asian history so the back ground of the various events was right up my street.If I was to read the book as a paperback I think a book mark listing all of the characters, and their links to each other, would be a great help. I read the book as an e-book and found remembering who was linked to who (or should I say whom) after a day or so of not reading Nanyang, was frustrating as I did not wish to scroll back on my Kindle – I think reading Nanyang in printed format would be easier.
The author has a great love of research, and Asian history, and this shows as the story unfolds. I must say I particularly liked the author’s description of various battle & fight scenes. He never tried to alter history, but he did bring to life the skirmishes and battles of the period, and used them with great effect to move the story forward. I found myself reading faster and faster to reach the climax of a particular battle, even though I was aware of the historical outcome. The book was a pleasure to read.