Charles Allen , Tales from the South China Seas (Futura/David Charles, o/p). Memoirs of the last generation of British colonists, in which predictable Raj attitudes prevail, though some of the drama of everyday lives is evinced with considerable pathos.

Barbara Watson Andaya and Leonard Andaya , The History of Malaysia (Macmillan/St Martin's Press, o/p in UK). This standard text on the region takes a fairly even-handed view of Malaysia, and finds time for cultural coverage.

Noel Barber , War of the Running Dogs (Arrow, UK, o/p). Illuminates the Malayan Emergency with a novelist's eye for mood.

Odoardo Beccari , Wanderings in the Great Forests of Borneo (OUP, o/p in US). Vivid turn-of-the-century account of the natural and human environment of Sarawak.

Isabella Bird , The Golden Chersonese (OUP/Century, o/p). Delightful epistolary romp through old Southeast Asia, penned by the intrepid Bird, whose adventures in the Malay states in 1879 included elephant-back rides and encounters with alligators.

Margaret Brooke , My Life in Sarawak (OUP, UK, o/p). Engaging account of nineteenth-century Sarawak by White Rajah Charles Brooke's wife, which reveals a sympathetic attitude to her subjects and an unprejudiced colonial eye.

Anthony Burgess , The Long Day Wanes (Minerva/Norton). Burgess's Malayan trilogy - Time for a Tiger, The Enemy in the Blanket and Beds in the East - published in one volume, provides a witty and acutely observed vision of 1950s Malaya, underscoring the racial prejudices of the period.

Iskandar Carey , The Orang Asli (OUP, o/p). The only detailed anthropological work on the indigenes of Peninsular Malaysia.

Spencer Chapman , The Jungle is Neutral (Mayflower/Royal Publications, o/p). This riveting first-hand account of being lost, and surviving, in the Malay jungle during World War II reads like a breathless novel.

Mark Cleary & Peter Eaton , Borneo Change and Development (Penerbit Fajar Bakti, Malaysia). A very readable composite of Bornean history, economy and society, that's rounded off by a section dealing with issues such as logging, conservation and the future of the Penan.

GWH Davison & Chew Yen Fook , A Photographic Guide to Birds of Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore (New Holland/R.Curtis). Well-keyed and user-friendly, these slender volumes carry oodles of glossy plates that make positive identifying a breeze. The companion volume, A Photographic Guide to Birds of Borneo, is also excellent.

Peter Dickens , SAS The Jungle Frontier (Lionel Leventhal). Gripping account of British special forces involvement in the Malayan Emergency.

CS Godshalk , Kalimantaan (Abacus). Recent novel based around the life of James Brooke, the first White Rajah. A brilliantly written story very faithful to the cultural facts of nineteenth-century Sarawak.

Eric Hansen , Stranger In The Forest (Abacus/Houghton Mifflin o/p). A gripping book, the result of a seven-month tramp through the forests of Sarawak and Kalimantan in 1982, that almost saw the author killed by a poison dart.

Tom Harrisson , A World Within (OUP, US, o/p). The only in-depth description of the Kelabit peoples of Sarawak, and a cracking good World War II tale courtesy of Harrisson, who parachuted into the Kelabit Highlands to organize resistance against the Japanese.

Victor T King , The Best of Borneo Travel (OUP Blackwell). Compendium of extracts from Bornean travel writing since the sixteenth century; an interesting travelling companion.

Dennis Lau Penans , The Vanishing Nomads of Borneo (Lee Ming Press, Malaysia) and Borneo - A Photographic Journey (Travelcom Asia). Two brilliant photographic journeys with descriptive texts on Sarawak's indigenous peoples.

Andro Linklater , Wild People (John Murray/Grove-Atlantic). As telling and as entertaining a glimpse into the lifestyle of the Iban as you could pack, depicting their age-old traditions surviving amidst the baseball caps and rock posters.

KS Maniam , The Return (Skoob, UK); In A Far Country (Skoob, UK); Haunting the Tiger. The purgative writings of this Tamil-descended Malaysian author are strong, highly descriptive and humorous - essential reading.

W Somerset Maugham , Short Stories Volume 4 (Mandarin/Penguin). Peopled by hoary sailors and colonials wearing mutton chop whiskers and topees, Maugham's short stories resuscitate turn-of-the-century Malaya; quintessential colonial literature graced by an easy style and a steady eye for a story.

Redmond O'Hanlon , Into The Heart of Borneo (Picador/Vintage). A hugely entertaining yarn recounting O'Hanlon's refreshingly amateurish romp through the jungle to a remote summit on the Sarawak/Kalimantan border, partnered by the English poet James Fenton.

Ambrose B Rathborne , Camping and Tramping in Malaya (OUP, o/p). Lively nineteenth-century account with insights into the colonial personalities and working conditions of the leading figures of the day.

James Ritchie , Bruno Masser, The Inside Story (Summer Times Publishing, Malaysia). Detailed account on the self-styled hero of the Penan in the early years of the 1990s when indigenous people manned barricades in a vain attempt to stop loggers ruining parts of Sarawak.

Spenser St John , Life in the Forests of the Far East (OUP, UK). A description of an early ascent of Mount Kinabalu is a highlight of this animated nineteenth-century adventure, written by the personal secretary to Rajah Brooke.

Vinson H Sutlive , The Iban of Sarawak (Waveland Press, Malaysia). Academic work exploring the recent history of the largest and most influential of Malaysia's indigenous peoples, after the Malays themselves.

C Mary Turnbull , A Short History of Malaysia, Singapore & Brunei (Graham Brash, Singapore). Decent, informed introduction to the region.

Alfred Russel Wallace , The Malay Archipelago (OUP/Dover, o/p). Wallace's peerless account of the flora and fauna of Borneo, based on travels made between 1854 and 1862 - during which time he collected over one hundred thousand specimens. Still required reading for nature lovers.