Lloyd Fernando Biography

Lloyd Fernando is a MALAYSIAN but he was born in Sri Lanka in 1926, and in
1938, at the age of twelve, he migrated to Singapore with his family. This early
migration across Scorpion Orchid is a story about the ordeal of four young men,
close friends in their final year of university.The four are carefully chosen to
represent the main ethnic groups in Singapore: Santinathan is Indian, Sabran,
Malay, Guan Kheng, Chinese and Peter DAlmeida, Eurasian. Santinathan is bright,
but something of a maverick. Refusing to observe the conventions of university
life by missing essay assignments and disrupting lectures and meetings, he gets
himself expelled from university and ends up as a village schthe Indian Ocean
had an enriching influence on Fernando, the writer and scholar, as it was to plant
the seeds of a transcultural, diasporic imagination in him at an impressionable
age. Life was moving along at a steady pace, and Fernando continued his
schooling at St Patricks, but the Japanese occupation of Singapore from 1943 to
1945 dealt a severe blow, interrupting his formal schooling and, most tragically,
costing his fathers life in one of the Japanese bombing raids. Following his
fathers death, Fernando started working as a trishaw rider, construction labourer
and apprentice mechanic, to support himself and the family. He also joined the
Ceylon branch of the Indian National Army, not impelled by any ideology but out
of a sheer necessity for self-sustenance.
After the war, Fernando completed his Cambridge School Certificate and
embarked on a school teaching career. In 1955, he entered the University of
Singapore, graduating in 1959 with double Honours in English and Philosophy. In
1960, he joined the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur as an assistant lecturer,
and returned to the same post four years later, having obtaining a Ph.D. in
English from the University of Leeds, England. In 1967, he was elevated to
Professor and Head of English at the University of Malaya, posts he held until
1979. People retire at Malaysia at 55, and so when it was time for him to retire,
Lloyd didnt want to have to continue on a yearly contract, and not be certain of
anything. He decided to take up law. He went to England and studied law at City
University and then at Middle Temple, coming back with his law degrees. He
joined a firm, and eventually started his own practice here, which he continued
right up to the time he had a stroke, which was in December 1997.

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