Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Novels:
• The Serpent's Tooth, Times Books International,
Singapore, 1982
• The Bondmaid, self-published, 1995 (Orion 1997;
foreign edns 1997, 1998)
• The Teardrop Story Woman, Orion, London, 1998
• Following the Wrong God Home, Allen & Unwin,
London, 2001
• Leap of Love, Horizon Books, Singapore, 2003 (a
novella)
• The Song of Silver Frond, Orion, London, 2003
Poetry
• Love's Lonely Impulses, Heinemann Asia, Singapore, 1992
• Humoresque, Horizon Books, Singapore, 2006
Non-fiction
• Unhurried Thoughts At My Funeral, Horizon Books,
Singapore, 2005
The living and the dead—there is something that binds them. For the
living are endlessly fascinated by tales of the dead, whether they are
about an ancestor whose ghost reputedly haunts an old ancestral
house, or an airline pilot whose ghost is forever condemned to roam
the earth with that of his mistress for an unspeakably cruel suicide pact
that plunges a hundred others to their deaths.
The dead too appear to be fascinated by the living. They want to come
back to reassure, console, seek revenge, and seek forgiveness or simply
to connect across an immense gulf of darkness and mystery. Death may
bring silence but it is a howling silence with the urgent needs, hopes,
desires and torments on both sides.
This is my first internationally published novel.
Set in Singapore in the early 1950s, The Bondmaid captures the special
ethos of a wealthy and powerful Chinese household in that bygone
era.
A little girl, Han, is sold as a bondmaid into the House of Wu, where
she grows up with the young heir. But the idyll of childhood
attachment quickly turns into a nightmare of thwarted sexual
passion, as Han, beautiful, proud and uncompromisingly loyal,
defies the forces of tradition and tyranny in a household where
patriarchs and matriarchs wield inexorable power, lustful male
relatives watch young bondmaids to claim their rightful share of
pleasure and gods and goddesses smile to see the human drama
unfold. The Bondmaid chronicles the strength of one woman’s love—
right to its terrifying climax.