Short stories
Little Ironies: Stories of Singapore
Catherine Lim · 1978
Synopsis
Seventeen short stories about ordinary people in Singapore, caught in the contradictions of a city that is modernising and becoming cosmopolitan: conflicts between generations, clashes between traditional Chinese values and new ambitions, class gaps. Each story closes on an ironic reversal; in one of them, a taxi driver readily earns his living from the prostitutes he carries while despising them.
Context
The collection appeared in 1978 in Singapore from Heinemann, in the Writing in Asia series; it is its author's first book of fiction. Written in simple language, in the third person, it draws its effects from the irony of situations more than from commentary. It became a bookshop success and serves as a set text for Singaporean school-leaving examinations. A second collection of eighteen short stories, in the same vein and from the same publisher, followed two years later.
Who it is for
Very short stories, in English, easy to approach; they do not exist in French.
Prizes and reception
In 2015, the Business Times counted it among the ten best Singaporean books in English since 1965, and the Straits Times among ten classics of the country.