Xi Ni Er,Howard Goldblatt,Sylvia Li-Chun Lin
In this Singapore Literature Prize-winning collection of stories, an aging Japanese ex-soldier, ignorant about the horrors of the Japanese Occupation, returns to Singapore for a nostalgic visit; a young boyâ€™s sole contact with his father consists of a weekly meeting at McDonaldâ€™s; and a hopeful employee tries to win over his tumour-stricken boss with traditional Chinese medicine. Set against the backdrop of Singaporeâ€™s rapid development from the 1980s to the early 2000s, the poignant and witty stories in ,The Earnest Mask ,peel back the veneer of official history, revealing flashes of the personal stories buried beneath.,Chia Hwee Pheng has published eight books in Chinese, including the poetry collection ,Kidnapping Times, and the fiction collection ,The Unbearable Heaviness of Life,, under the pen name, ,Xi Ni Er,. He has received the S.E.A. Write Award, the National Book Development Council of Singaporeâ€™s Book Award and the Singapore Literature Prize. He was awarded Singaporeâ€™s Cultural Medallion in 2008. Currently he serves as president of the Singapore Association of Writers. This is his first book to be translated into English.,Howard Goldblatt, and ,Sylvia Li-chun Lin, are the translators of the 2010 Man Asian Literary Prize-winning novel, ,Three Sisters, by Bi Feiyu. Their translation of Chu Tâ€™ien-wenâ€™s ,Notes of a Desolate Man, won the American Literary Translators Associationâ€™s National Translation Award in 2000. Goldblatt is also the translator of Nobel Prize Winner Mo Yan's work.
Fiction
The Earnest Mask