Singapore, 1960s: Sembawang is home away from home for a tightly-knit community of bachelors and families who work at Her Majesty’s Naval Base. 

Behind closed doors, a matriarch controls her daughters-in-law’s movements. A bachelor from Kerala pines by his window for his forbidden lover. A maid from a rubber estate across the border aches to hold her young son once more. An inter-racial love between a conservative Tamil woman and a worldly Chinese man wreaks havoc in the life of an innocent bystander.

The idyllic village life is shaken when two midwives are viciously attacked at the maternity clinic, and again when one of their own beloved residents meets with an unnatural death. As catastrophes strike, the village comes together as one.

A dramatic, sweeping saga of Sembawang families across five decades.

About the Author

Kamaladevi Aravindan is an award-winning Tamil and Malayalam writer, essayist and playwright. She has extensively published short stories, essays and plays in Singapore, Malaysia and in the USA. One of her books, Nuval was translated into English and along with another Tamil novel, Karavu, both are being used as university texts in postgraduate classes in India and Malaysia. Her short story, Mugadugal, was adapted into an award-winning short film for the Utter 2014 festival.

About the Translator

Anitha Devi Pillai (Ph.D.) is an applied linguist and teacher educator at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). She has authored five books, including From Kerala to Singapore: Voices from the Singapore Malayalee Community (2017), From Estate to Embassy:  Memories of an Ambassador (2019), and The Story of Onam (in press). She has also published academic papers, poems, stories and newspaper articles and is currently working on a collection of short stories.