Böcker av Suchen Christine Lim

In A Bit of Earth, Suchen Christine Lim deftly weaves historical fact and a fiery imagination in a visually powerful multicultural story that spans three generations and four decades--proving once again that she is one of Asia's leading fiction writers.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 gods; and the Mahmuds, scions of the Malayan soil; each with different dreams for the bit of earth they live on. Their destinies meet and this clash of hopes inevitably leads to tragedy."A Bit of Earth chronicles the visceral and cultural struggle of a young Chinese immigrant to survive in an equally struggling Malayan nation... The immigrant earns his bit of earth only by continuously re-inventing himself and by negotiation with the forces of history." -- Lily Rose Tope, Professor, Department of English & Comparative Literature, University of the Philippines

The first novel from Singapore Literature Prize Winner Suchen Christine Lim.A powerful story of young love and idealism set in Singapore in the 1960s, a time of political uncertainties and economic insecurity. Young, passionate and idealistic, Sister Marie rejects the conformity of her first love, a Singaporean police inspector, and embraces the liberalism of her second love, an American missionary. Fresh into university, she leads a group of students to question the values of a nation gripped by fear of the government and loss of their rice bowl. They organize a protest march against the Vietnam War, which leads to a riot, detention and deportation of the workers they try to help. In the midst of this, a student meets a tragic death, while a lecturer and a suspected Communist agent provocateur goes crazy in his attempts to radicalize the students-workers' movement.

From an award-winning Singaporean novelist comes a multi-layered tale about love, sisterhood, spousal abuse, and Cantonese opera in the lives of three generations of women--all set against the dramatic sweep of Singapore's development The famous cross-dressing Cantonese opera singer Chan Kam Foong passes away, leaving her secret journal to her granddaughter, Xiu Yin, an archival officer at the Singapore National Archives. Xiu Yin reads through the journal that chronicles her grandmother's relationship with Dearest Intimate in their village in China to their respective escapes to the Nanyang before WWII and her desperate search for Dearest Intimate in Singapore. Her grandmother's reflections and letters to Dearest Intimate forces Xiu Yin to examine her marriage to an abusive husband and she plucks up the courage to leave him. A surprise encounter with her first love, a rising Cantonese opera singer, brings a period of calm and joy. But when Meng proposes marriage, Xiu Yin backs off and he leaves for Hong Kong. It takes three years of loneliness and letter writing before they reunite again.