Regional newspapers have serialised extracts from The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew, while two magazines also ran cover stories on the launch of the book and the revelations made in them.

Asiaweek, in its Sept 25 edition, carried a 10-page extract of the book, giving snippets of his boyhood, the war years, his courtship of his wife Kwa Geok Choo, and Singapore's merger with, and separation from, Malaysia.

It also ran a five-page report titled War of Words, which described the memoirs as the "controversial new book" that "takes aim at Malaysia's founding fathers".

And the angry comeback from Malaysia, it noted, was "predictable".

The Far Eastern Economic Review (Feer) carried in its Sept 24 issue a cover story titled Politically Incorrect, which included a two-page interview with Mr Lee, in which he noted that fundamental differences between Malaysia and Singapore had remained unchanged over the years.

It also featured a two-page extract of the events leading to the Separation on Aug 9, 1965, as well as a report that argued that despite the present strain in ties, Malaysia and Singapore needed each other.

Feer's editor Nayan Chanda also described the memoirs as "really gripping reading" in an interview with cable news network CNBC last month. He added: "Where it comes to describing the politics of Singapore, his clash with the socialists, communists and with the Malay leadership, it is very detailed and unless you are a real history buff, you may not care to know all the details.

"But the book, as a whole, is a very good read."

American weekly Newsweek featured a review of the memoirs in its Sept 28 issue titled The Survival Game, in which it noted that Singapore had prospered despite being a "Chinese island in a Malay sea".

In its Sept 21 edition, Time published an eight-page extract titled simply The Singapore Story.

It describes Mr Lee's boyhood days, the Japanese invasion of Malaya and his encounters with Japanese soldiers -- including an incident when he was slapped and made to kneel in front of them for forgetting to bow -- and his undergraduate days in Cambridge.

Hongkong daily South China Morning Post ran a 1-1/4-page extract in its Review section, titled The End Of The Affair, on Sept 19, recounting the events of Aug 9, 1965.

In the region, nine Chinese newspapers and one magazine in Malaysia, Hongkong and Taiwan serialised extracts from the memoirs from as early as Sept 12. These include Malaysia's Sin Chew Jit Poh, Nanyang Siang Pau and China Press, Hongkong's Ming Pao Daily News and Taiwan's China Times and United Daily News.

In Bangkok, The Nation newspaper plans to publish extracts of the memoirs, and also to translate these into Thai for its sister business daily Krungthep Turakij.

The newspaper group is also interested in translating and publishing the memoirs in Thai.