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Ng Yi-Sheng
Lion City
Synopsis:
A man learns that all the animals at the Zoo are robots. A secret terminal in Changi Airport caters to the gods. A prince falls in love with a crocodile. A concubine is lost in time. The island of Singapore disappears.
These are the exquisitely strange tales of Lion City, the first collection of short fiction by award-winning poet and playwright Ng Yi-Sheng. Infused with myth, magical realism and contemporary sci-fi, each of these tales invites the reader to see this city-state in a new and darkly fabulous light.
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Akshita Nanda
Nimita’s Place
Synopsis:
It is 1944 in India and Nimita Khosla yearns to attend university to become an engineer, but her parents want a different life for her. As she accepts her fate and marries, religious upheaval is splitting the country and forcing her family to find a new home.
In 2014, her granddaughter, molecular biologist Nimita Sachdev, escapes India to run away from the prospect of an arranged marriage. Staking out a future in Singapore, she faces rising anger against immigrants and uncertainty about her new home.
Two generations apart, these two women walk divergent paths but face the same quandaries: who are we, and what is home?
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Sithuraj Ponraj
It is easy to be an Italian (in Tamil)
Synopsis:
It is Easy to Be An Italian is a collection of 80 poems by Sithuraj Ponraj in Tamil. The poems seek to explore the various aspects and challenges associated with preserving one’s own Singaporean Tamil culture and identity in an increasingly interconnected global environment. To do this, the poems in this collection break away from images and forms traditionally used in Tamil poetry while retaining a strong connection to purity of the language shaped by the three millennia of Tamil literature. The title of the collection reflects the tension that exists in the hearts of many Singaporeans – a deep sense of one’s own culture, and yet the possibility of accessing online communities where one can be something else altogether if one chooses. A world where indeed it is easy to be Italian or anyone else you choose to be.