A China Rhyming Angle on some of Fowler’s “Forgotten Authors”

Christopher Fowler’s The Book of Forgotten Authors is a fun read. I thought I’d pull out a few potentially useful anecdotes on China (and perhaps wider Asia)-related authors. Some I knew; some I didn’t…(he does mention several China-linked writers as well those below who I’ve blogged about before including Peter Fleming and Robert Van Gulik…

Pierre Boulle – I knew Boulle (below), a Frenchman, worked as an engineer on Malaya rubber plantation and that he had been involved in the french resistance movement in China, Burma and French Indo-china. He was eventually captured by Vichyites and made to do forced labour on the Mekong – out of this experience came his great book The Bridge Over the River Kwai. I doidn’t know that Boulle later wrote Planet of the Apes! Anybody fancy a Vichy vs Free French in Indo-China analysis of those movies?

Simon Skidelsky – I had read several novels by Caryl Brahms and Simon “Skid” Skidelsky (below) – murders at the ballet novels mostly; fun on a rainy day. I did not know though that “Skid” was born in Manchuria to White Russian parents. I did know though that Robert Skidelsky, the British economic historian, was born in Harbin of similarly White Russian parentage. However, I don’t think they were related.

Leslie Charteris – I did know that Charteris, the creator of the Simon Templar (The Saint) character, was half Chinese and born in Singapore in 1907. I did not know that after the success of the books and their adaptation to movies by Hollywood Charteris went to California but was denied permanent residency in the USA because of the Chinese Exclusion Act as a person of “50% or greater oriental blood”.