Bugis Nights by, Chris Stowers

 Devika Misra and Chris Stowers discuss his debut travel narrative, Bugis Nights. 

It’s taken Taiwan based writer and photo journalist Chris Stowers nearly 35 years to publish his debut travel narrative Bugis Nights. This light but exciting read is part memoir and part fantasy. Stowers chronicles his journey on both land and sea as a young backpacker across Asia in the late nineteen eighties. Basing much of his story on diaries and photographs, Stowers harks back to a time when travel, he says, was “simpler, easier slower”…essentially more fun!. But Stowers’ story is about far more than the trials and triumphs of a young naive explorer. It is an endearing and perceptive observation of human behaviour in tough circumstances. With quiet humour, Stowers illustrates the courage, optimism and openness of the itinerant backpacker.

Eternal Summer of the Homeland: Agnes Chew talks about writing a story collection and being the Asia Winner of the CSSP

Courtesy of Author

Book Synopsis

The stories in Agnes Chew’s first fiction collection illuminate the complexity of choice when duty and desire collide, and what a person is willing to sacrifice. A daughter grapples with an unexpected discovery in the aftermath of her mother’s death. A husband struggles to understand his wife’s reaction to her pregnancy. An adolescent and a domestic worker exchange secrets whose weight they find they cannot bear. And in a corner of Changi Airport, a nondescript office cubicle, a patch of open forest, others strive to find meaning and home.

Courtesy of Author

Author Bio:

Agnes Chew is the author of Eternal Summer of My Homeland (2023) and The Desire For Elsewhere (2016). Her work has appeared in Granta, Necessary Fiction and Litbreak Magazine, among others, and her story, ‘Oceans Away from my Homeland’, won the 2023 Commonwealth Short Story Prize (Asia Region). She holds a Master’s degree in international development from LSE; her prize-winning dissertation, which examines inequality and societal well-being in Singapore, was featured in Singapore Policy Journal. Born and raised in Singapore, she is currently based in Germany. 

 

 

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EC: Agnes, welcome to Asian Books Blog, and congratulations on being the Asia Winner for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize as well as the publication of Eternal Summer of My Homeland. Let’s start with this: what draws you to the short story? 

 

AC: Thank you so much, Elaine, for your kind words and for this opportunity! I actually started out writing creative nonfiction, and when I ventured into the realm of fiction writing, the short story form felt like a natural (and conceivable) choice. The more short stories I wrote, the more I found myself drawn to the form. I appreciate its requisite focus on purity and intensity—the way it compels you to distil meaning within a compact space. It’s also a thrill to be able to write a short story within a feverish span of hours or days, especially when I compare it to the far longer process of writing a novel, which I’m now working on.

 

Play the Red Queen - A Vietnam War Crime Thriller

Saigon 1963 – multiple American military advisers and South Vietnamese Army officers are gunned down by the mysterious Red Queen, a deadly Vietnamese assassin. Two MP detectives, Ellsworth Miser and Clovis Robeson, are called in to investigate but find themselves stumbling into a mystery that's much deeper with international implications.

Singaporean writer Soon Ai Ling's stories are translated, transcreated and adapted by Yeo Wei Wei. An interview with Nicky Harman

 

Diasporic and Clan are two volumes of short stories by the sinophone Singaporean writer Soon Ai Ling, translated, transcreated and adapted by Yeo Wei Wei. Yeo has done a translation of Soon stories in Diasporic, and then transcreated and adapted them in Clan. As a translator myself, I was intrigued by this adventure in story-telling, so I asked Yeo Wei Wei to tell me more.

NH: could you tell me how you came across Soon's stories and what attracted you to them? 

WW: I received an email from Ailing one day out of the blue whilst I was in Norwich doing my MA in Creative Writing. She had asked Eva Tang about my translation of the subtitles and song lyrics for Eva’s documentary The Songs We Sang. She liked my translation very much and wished to approach me to ask if I would translate her fiction. After I finished my MA, I returned to Singapore and I looked for Ailing’s book of short stories in the National Library. I read them and I also watched Eva’s short film that was based on Ailing’s story “Chef Tham”. Ailing’s stories are set in China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore. The Chinese diasporic contexts in these different countries are the basis of the rich story worlds found in her fiction. She is unique for this reason, amongst Singaporean Chinese authors. I was also attracted to the predicaments of her protagonists. Very often, her stories deal with the private struggles of men and women in traditional Asian family settings. They are individuals torn between personal desires and family history, hierarchy, family values and expectations.