“A study of debate, mobilizing concepts, disappointment, and ideological residue – a fresh analysis of Malay radicalism, written with passion and style, that will give a boost to the ‘history of ideas’ in Southeast Asia.”

ANTHONY MILNER, Australian National University

“The story of the Malay radicals has never been told so fully and so vividly; the author has pieced together a fascinating history which he tells with considerable compassion. Though the history of the Malay radicals may, as the author suggests, be seen as a history of losers, if we never know about those who lost, we may never have a proper appreciation of those who won.. The prose is exceedingly readable (and often almost lyrical).”

CAROL TAN, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

“This is a highly readable and valuable contribution. Scholars of indigenous responses to colonialism would be interested in this twentieth-century example of a radical anti-colonial movement in a different corner of the British Empire, where groups of native Malay intellectuals and activists articulated their own visions of modernity and nationhood to contest colonial and male patriarchal discourse.”

Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History