A journey back... 8.12.1962

"We who were children in 1962 are about to hand over to a generation who have had all the benefits of the health, education, knowledge and prosperity passed on to them by our parents and grandparents." HRH Prince Mohamed Bolkiah

"Kita adalah sejarah kita...". Sejarah membentuk peribadi dan jati diri setiap bangsa. Mengajar kita tentang pelbagai aspek pengorbanan, baik dari segi politik dan kehidupan. Satu keperluan patriotik bagi memahami sejarah ini untuk generasi sekarang yang akan melapisi dan mewarisi khazanah ibu pertiwi.

I shall not give a review before fully reading the book. But seeing it available is definitely something to be excited about. It covers not only about Brunei but ASEAN as a whole. History is one of my favorite, I believe that your past shall not dictate your future... but definitely we can learn to improve our own history that we are making now.

More about the book; It revisits the time when all Southeast Asia was in turmoil and each country in today’s ASEAN region was a “domino” in a great global theory of the Cold War. It takes the reader on a journey to the first week of December 1962 – a week that reached its climax with the first shots of the “Brunei Rebellion”.

Based on the memories of people who were there at that time, it presents their lives, the communities they formed and the thoughts that may have occupied the minds of the three principal figures whose decisions on one day determined the future of the tiny nation and its 83,000 inhabitants.

In doing so, a picture is revealed not only of a small country but also of a year that symbolised the Cold War. It shows how 1962 was indeed “The Year of the Tiger” and how its claws dug deep into the lives of ordinary people on every continent.

The book makes use of many techniques - cinematic, televisual, literary and digital - in a story that is part-screenplay and part-documentary, sometimes a narrative, sometimes a commentary, sometimes a poem, sometimes a handwritten diary and, occasionally, even a comic strip.

The result is an unusual but dramatic and intensely human portrait of Brunei, Southeast Asia and life in the turbulent 1960’s. Synopsis from www.8thdecember.com.bn

Tags : brunei, history, prince mohamed bolkiah

Posted by : syen
Date : January 30, 2008 | Permalink