Dialogues with Chin Peng: New light on the Malayan communist party

Chin, C. C. and Hack, Karl eds. (2004). Dialogues with Chin Peng: New light on the Malayan communist party. Singapore: Singapore University Press.

URL: http://www.nus.edu.sg/sup/his.html

Abstract

Chin Peng is the longest-serving Secretary-General of a Communist Party, having served continuously from 1947 to present. He led his party into the Malayan Emergency, and latterly to a new peace agreement in 1989.

This book is unique in giving the reader a look at how the historical record about this figure has been constructed. It gives the original papers presented to Chin Peng to stimulate his reponses at oral history sessions, and an annotated version of the resulting sessions. These are completed by editors' chapters which give the context. This allows the reader to see how Chin Peng blended his own ideas with responses to historians, to produce his own quasi-biography, Chin Peng and Ian Ward, Alias Chin Peng: My Side of the Story.

Both editors were involved at all stages, presenting background papers, chairing oral hstory sessions, and compiling the book. They had to ensure not only translation between Chinese and English, but also that name changes between different Chinese dialects, and numerous aliases, were made clear. In 2007 it was translated into Chinese, ISBN 983 9673 97 1.

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