A Malayan Affair

In order to escape a dry marriage to Stuart, a stiff-necked, uncongenial rubber planter in 1930s Kelantan in British Malaya, Valerie Mitchell instigates an adulterous affair with her Muslim chauffeur, Osman. Osman is already married to Minah and knows what he is doing is wrong, but he struggles to spurn the advances of this seductive white woman as she offers herself up to him at the plantation bungalow. Valerie falls pregnant and takes the unprecedented step of leaving her husband, converting to Islam and going to live with Osman in his village, but neither she nor Osman is prepared for such a clash of lives, cultures and religions. The Sultan is displeased and the village headman is at a loss what to do. When the baby is born with Stuart s ginger hair and no obvious Malay features, Osman and the villagers are outraged and the resident bomoh (shaman) suspects evil forces at play and declares the baby has the devil within. Valerie leaves the village in disgrace, abandons her newborn at a Eurasian orphanage and soon finds herself spurned by both the Malay society she had hoped to adopt and British colonial society in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore which she has brought shame upon through her scandalous betrayal of British decorum.