Caught betwixt and between
Fiji in 1914 would appear to be a perfect island paradise. For constable Akal Singh, it is at is best a purgatory, hopefully a temporary one. Far from the turmoil of the Great War, far from the desperately poor regions of the British Empire, for Singh, it is just far from everything; far from his family in the Punjab, far from his beloved billeting in Hong Kong. But one thing that is uncomfortably close is racial prejudice, particularly as Fiji is an island divided. At the top sits the small British elite, owners of the sugar cane plantations that forms the colony’s economic backbone.