Andrew Barber’s Fortress Penang, chronicles the story of Tom Baxter, a washed up MI6 intelligence officer who finds himself in Penang just before the Japanese occupation. Set against the Japanese occupation of Malaya in 1941/42 and the British decision to abandon its oldest colony in the region, this novel narrates how Baxter finds himself swept up by a set of powerful historical forces, for which he and the British colonial authorities have little or no understanding, and little answers. One by one the pillars that sustained the colonial rule collapse, finally leaving Baxter a fugitive in what was once proudly known as the ‘Pearl of the Orient’.