Suchen Christine Lim: 5 books

Voted Best Indie Book by Kirkus Reviews and awarded a prestigious Blue Star. Ping, an American citizen, returns to Singapore after many years and sees a country transformed by prosperity. Gone are the boatmen and hawkers who once lived along the crowded riverside and in their place rise the...

A mother finds out her son is gay; a daughter finds out her two mothers are lesbians; a niece stumbles upon the body of her dead uncle dressed in his wife’s sarong kebaya; and an old man’s nascent feelings for a Filipino maid lead him back to his suppressed art. "The Man Who Wore His Wife’s...

Malaya. A land of unparalleled richness. For centuries, the peninsula has attracted fortune hunters, money-grabbing pirates and migrants seeking a better life. Among those whose lives are rooted in the Malayan soil are three families: the Wongs, sons of the Chinese earth; the Wees, subjects of the English...

Young, passionate and idealistic, Sister Marie rejects the conformity of her first love, Paul Tan, the police inspector. She embraces the liberalism of her second love, Hans Kuhn, the American missionary, and leads a group of students to question the values of a nation gripped by fear of the government...

With this collection of short stories, Lim delves beneath Singapore's prosperity and coded decorum to reveal genuine people facing difficult issues that are normally strictly taboo in Asia, such as the mother who discovers her son is gay; the daughter who learns her two mothers are lesbians; and the niece who finds her dead uncle dressed in his wife's clothes.