Not Going Gentle: Into That Good Night

Chek Ling was born in a thatched wooden hut in Sarawak, a subject of Sir Charles Vyner Brooke, the last Rajah. His mother was young and illiterate. His father, a Confucian scholar turned math teacher, was twice her age and twice widowed. Chek Ling grew up in a blended household filled with anxiety, tension, and desolation.

When he arrived in Australia in 1962 on an unexpected Colombo Plan scholarship, he thought he had finally reached the "God's own country" he had dreamed of as a child.

This...