In a north Sumatran cave, Raffles swears fealty to a secret society and enters a world long hidden from colonial eyes... until now.
“THE GOLDEN SWORD is Heart of Darkness meets The Phantom, but Stamford Raffles is The Ghost Who Walks.” - Jaq Tweedie
The Golden Sword marks the literary debut for John Pain, musician (Hallelujah Picassos), designer and director. His work in the animation field took him to Singapore in 2006, then later Indonesia and Malaysia. He was based in South Asia for more than a decade, and now lives in a small cabin in the north of New Zealand.
The presence of Stamford Raffles is everywhere in Singapore. Raffles, the English insurance clerk who led the colonisation of the island and designed the concept of the free port is immortalised in statues, and school and street names. “He pretty much had the run of the place”, says John Pain.
“Singapore was at the end of his career. But what we know today as Singapore, the high-tech postmodern utopia, was also the capital of a thriving kingdom in the 1400s.”
What sparked Pain's interest was learning the original name for Singapore’s Fort Canning was Bukit Larangan, or Forbidden Hill. As a New Zealander, he was familiar with the colonial practice of erasing indigenous identity by renaming places of power.
Between contracts, Pain returned to Aotearoa and spent time in Te Urewera where he made collaborative music and narrative in alignment with Tuhoe principles and tikanga. These experiences have fed and informed his approach to writing about colonialism and its experience of indigenous culture.
Released August 22nd, 2019 by Dunbar Noon Publishing. RRP $35.00. ISBN 978 0473 481995
Book launch - 6pm, August 22nd at Time Out Books, Mt Eden
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