The Master of Penang is a novel about the true life of David Brown – a Scottish lawyer, merchant-adventurer, planter, and one of the early pioneers in the East lndia Company’s settlement of Penang. From his arrival in 1800 on an East Indiaman, he pursued a rich and vivid life and established a company that would play a central role in Penang life until the Japanese occupation of 1941. In fictional terms, this is Brown’s story