Singapore Noir (Akashic Noir),Used

Singapore is exposed in all of its noir glory with scintillating stories from the very best of the city's authors.Singapore Noir was nominated for a Popular Bookstore Readers Choice Award.Singapore, with its great wealth and great poverty existing amid ethnic, linguistic, and cultural tensions, offers fertile ground for bleak fiction, as shown by the 14 tales in this solid Akashic noir anthology . . . Tan has assembled a strong lineup of Singapore natives and knowledgeable visitors for this volume exploring the dark side of a fascinating country. Publishers WeeklySingapore Noir is the latest in Akashics longrunning and globetrotting Noir series, giving plenty of new and unfamiliar voices a chance to shine. San Francisco Book ReviewAkashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.Brandnew stories by: Colin Goh, Simon Tay/Donald Tee Quee Ho, Philip Jeyaretnam, Colin Cheong, Cheryl LuLien Tan, Monica Bhide, S.J. Rozan, Lawrence Osborne, Suchen Christine Lim, Ovidia Yu, Damon Chua, Johann S. Lee, Dave Chua, and Nury Vittachi.From the introduction by Cheryl LuLien Tan:Say Singapore to anyone and youll likely hear one of a few words: Caning. Fines. Chewing gum."For much of the West, the narrative of Singaporea modern Southeast Asian citystate perched on an island on the tip of the Malay Peninsulahas been marked largely by its governments strict laws and unwavering enforcement of them . . . As much as I understand these outside viewpoints, I have always lamented that the quirky and dark complexities of my native countrys culture rarely seem to make it past its borders . . ."Beneath its sparkling veneer is a country teeming with shadows . . . And its stories remain. The rich stories that attracted literary lions W. Somerset Maugham and Rudyard Kipling to hold court at the Raffles Hotel (where the Singapore Sling was created) are still sprinkled throughout its neighborhoods. And in the following pages, youll get the chance to discover some of them . . ."Youll find stories from some of the best contemporary writers in Singaporethree of them winners of the Singapore Literature Prize, essentially the countrys Pulitzer: Simon Tay, writing as Donald Tee Quee Ho, tells the story of a hardboiled detective who inadvertently wends his way into the underbelly of organized crime, Colin Cheong shows us a surprising side to the countrys ubiquitous cheerful taxi uncle, while Suchen Christine Lim spins a wistful tale of a Chinese temple medium whose past resurges to haunt her . . ."As for mine, I chose a setting close to my heartthe kelongs, or old fisheries on stilts, that once dotted the waters of Singapore but are gradually disappearing. I have a deep sense of romance about these kelongs, along with the many other settings, characters, nuances, and quirks that youll see in these stories. Theyre intense, inky, nebulous. There is evil, sadness, a foreboding. And liars, cheaters, the valiant abound."This is a Singapore rarely explored in Western literatureuntil now. No Disneyland here; but there is a death penalty.