A Different Sky – Meira Chand
Singapore, 1927. Three young people are starting to question whether this in between island can ever truly be their home.
Mei Lan comes from a famous Chinese dynasty but yearns to free herself from its stifling traditions. Ten-year-old Howard seethes at the indignities heaped on his fellow Eurasians by the colonial British. Raj, fresh off the boat from India, wants only to work hard and become a successful businessman.
As the years pass, and the Second World War sweeps through the east, with the Japanese occupying Singapore, the three are thrown together in unexpected ways, and tested to breaking point.
Meet an over-the-hill Pop Yé-yé singer with a faulty heart, two conservative middle-aged women holding hands in the Galápagos, and the proprietor of a Laundromat with a penchant for Cantonese songs of heartbreak. Rehash national icons: the truth about racial riot fodder-girl Maria Hertogh living out her days as a chambermaid in Lake Tahoe, a mirage of the Merlion as a ladyboy working Orchard Towers, and a high-stakes fantasy starring the still-suave lead of the 1990s TV hit serial The Unbeatables.
