Christine Suchen Lim is a third-generation descendant of illiterate Chinese immigrants in Malaysia. She grew up on both sides of the causeway which separates the island of Singapore from Malaysia, before moving with her family to Singapore when she was 15. She graduated from the National University of Singapore and taught in a college for some years before writing fiction.

Lim published her first novel in 1984. Entitled Rice Bowl, it questions the regulated and pragmatic politics of Singapore in the sixties. In 1986, she co-authored a short play, “The Amah: a Portrait in Black and White”, which earned her the Merit Prize in the National University of Singapore- SHELL Short Play Competition. Her second novel, Gift fro

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