Saint Jack was published by Bodley Head in 1973. Jack Flowers (né Fiori) is a middle-aged American living in Singapore in the late 1960s. He has no visible means of support beyond small hustles — procuring women for visiting sailors, arranging tours for businessmen, running errands for the Chinese triads. His dream is to open a high-class brothel that would make him wealthy and, paradoxically, respectable.
The novel follows Jack through the declining years of British colonial Singapore into independence — a period when the old expatriate world of clubs, servants, and casual racism is collapsing, and the new Singapore of Lee Kuan Yew is rising. Jack is caught between: too American for the British, too Western for the Chinese, too disreputable for the new technocratic regime.
Theroux wrote the novel while living in Singapore (he taught at the university from 1968 to 1971). Peter Bogdanovich directed a 1979 film adaptation with Ben Gazzara as Jack — one of the better literary adaptations of the decade. Singapore banned both the book and the film.
Collecting Saint Jack
First edition (Bodley Head, London, 1973): Boards with dust jacket.
Market values:
- UK first edition, fine in jacket: $60–$150
- US first edition (Houghton Mifflin): $30–$80