Without doubt the launch of A Leopard Sings In Sarawak (first released as "Rainforest Tears") in Malaysia and Singapore was well received, with many members of the press writing articles of praise and commendation.
Click on the following links to see what the newspapers, periodicals and bloggers have to say;
Expatriate Lifestyle Magazine
Date: November 2008
Description:
This is a first for an Expatriate Lifestyle book review, I think. I actually get to recommend you a book written by ‘one of us’
Rainforest Tears’ author, Paul Leslie Smith is an expatriate who has spent the past 17years living and working here in Malaysia. His time in Miri peaked his interest in the Japanese occupation during the second world war and he has spent the past few years collecting anecdotes and checking historical records to produce a quite inspirational read.
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The Edge
Date:24th October 2008
Description:
While in his second year of working with an oil and gas company in Miri, Sarawak, Paul Leslie Smith met an elderly local at Shell’s airstrip, where he was waiting for his plane. “We started talking and he told me about how the airstrip was bombed out during World War II, I started thinking about the history of the place,” says Smith, explaining how his novel, Rainforest Tears: A Borneo Story, came about.
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Love and War
Date:19th November 2008
Media:The Sun
Description:
British engineer Paul Leslie Smith has been living in Malaysia since1990, spnding the first five years working in Miri, Sarawak, before being transferred to Kuala Lumpur.
During his sojourn in Miri, the 47-years-old bachelor developed a keen interest in the town and its history. Coupled with a desire to stay out of bars whenever he had to travel
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Time Out KL
Date:November 2008
Description:
‘Rainforest Tears’ is a deceptively gripping tale that rattles along, illustrating how World War II tore Sarawak and its inhabitants apart, Few of us can truly appreciate just how horrifying the Japanese occupation must have been and I can’t remember a fiction title so fully capturing , and imparting upon me, the mood and events of the time.
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Quill
Date:Oct - Dec 2008
Description:
Paul Leslie Smith is a British expatriate engineer who has long harboured an interest in Southeast Asia and Miri’s World War II history. He reveals the forgotten aspects of the Japanese Occupation of Sarawak in rainforest Tears: A Borneo Story.
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New Straits Times
Date:29th September 2008, Singapore & Malaysia
Description:
Rainforest Tears
By Paul Leslie Smith
Published by Marshall Cavendish Editions
556 pages
Subtitled A Borneo story, the narrative is set in and around Miri between 1937 and 1946.
It follows the experiences of a young British oil company engineer, who arrives in an almost idyllic Miri, senses a war looming and survives the Japanese Occupation.
The author is an expatriate engineer who worked in Miri long after the war, but it becomes clear as one reads the book that he researched his subject thoroughly.
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