30 stories about ordinary Singaporeans at their best and worst, their joys and griefs and angers, their dreams fulfilled or lost. They are tales about the awesome human condition and the even more awesome human spirit, interweaved with the author’s vignettes of her nearly 50 years in Singapore, such as how she came from Malaysia to live in Singapore and her run-in with then prime minister Goh Chok Tong. Stories include: The Quitter Who Stayed A Sock on the Jaw, a Blow on the Solar Plexus The Taximan Cometh A Writer’s Roller Coaster Ride The BKBC (bo kia bo chap) Interview Little Red Dot A Good Man in Singapore Elvis Presley Gave Me a Winning 4D Number Thanks , but No Thanks, Censorship! The Sixth C About the Author Catherine Lim is Singapore’s celebrated fiction author and prominent political commentator. She has written almost 20 books across various genres – short stories, novels, reflective prose, poems, political and satirical pieces. Known for writing about Singapore society, she has crossed swords several times with the establishment over her political commentaries. In this latest book, she rolls out the birthday champagne for Singapore and celebrates her adopted country’s 50th birthday

“I have noticed, increasingly, that people after the age of 65 or thereabouts begin to experience the fear of death in a very palpable way. While in their childhood and youth they had viewed death as happening only to grandparents, while in middle age they could still afford to relegate death to remote corners of their consciousness where it could not intrude upon the pleasures of living, the advent of old age after 65 brings to them a deeply disturbing sense of mortality.” So begins An Equal Joy, a collection of essays in which award-winning author Catherine Lim undertakes a bold and intense exploration into the fear of death, the nature of religion and the question of who we are. Drawing on her own experiences and myraid influences—from the Taoist “Sky God” of her childhood and the Christian God Jesus of her adulthood to scientist Pascal and philosopher Socrates; from intimate conversations with close friends to the imagined world of fictional characters—Lim reflects on the beauty of both the natural world and the world of faith. As Lim writes, “Truth, Goodness and Beauty. For me, they form the goals of a perfect life.” In sharing her insights, Lim not only provokes us to reflect on the meaning of life but also encourages us to live as meaningful a life as possible.

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 old ancestor whose ghost reputedly haunts an old ancestral home about to be torn down; a child never allowed to be born, whose little frightened call "Mummy! Mummy!" fills his mother's dreams at night; 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. In this collection of 14 short stories set in Singapore, Catherine Lim tells tales of the dead and their return, bringing readers on a journey of unease, excitement, trepidation and, above all, awe for the mystery that surrounds death.

This collection of eight short stories combines Catherine Lim’s sharp powers of observation with her insightful comments on the conflicts, both internal and external, brought about by love in the lives of men and women in modern-day Singapore. The result is a vibrant assortment of stories and voices brimming with courage, deep introspection and heartfelt emotion. Powerful and riveting, this collection is sure to captivate your mind and tug at your heartstrings and with its relentless prose and evocative charm.

Catherine Lim’s free-wheeling imagination cheerfully dispenses with all constraints to tell stories of that other world. Written with an exaggerated sense of earnestness and caution, the eighteen tales in this collection elicit in the reader the very goosebumps of terror she had herself experienced as a child listening to such tales. As an adult, these goosebumps persist for her. However, they no longer arise from fear, but from a sense of awe and mystery that she feels when she considers this large existential question: Despite our extensive scientific knowledge today, what do we know of the supernatural? What can we know of the supernatural? Catherine’s deep and abiding sense of mystery is reflected in the pronouncement by one of her characters in the last story in this collection: “I don't know, I don't know. I wish I did.”

The 12 stories in this collection electrify by their dazzling diversity of subject, their relentless observation and comment and their adroit use of language. Through the dark labyrinths of the secret lives of men and women in Singapore, Catherine Lim once again uses her sharp powers of observation to comment masterfully on our complex relationships against the immense and brilliant backdrop of our society’s achievements. Laying bare the infinite longing and inevitable weakness of the human heart, these stories celebrate the surprising power of love and its effects on every one of us.