The Place Of Shells a profound debut about grief and loss

Worlds collide in Mai Ishizawa's powerful yet heartbreaking debut, The Place Of Shells, which immediately catapulted her into the literary stratosphere as she scooped up both the Gunzo New Writers' Prize and the prestigious Akutagawa Prize.

- Walter Sim Japan Correspondent

readers would be sufficiently invested in Singapore's politics to log on hourly, daily, monthly? The natural consequence of this theoretical re-orientation of readership is to turn away from local politics to the foreign, which feels like biting at the hand that feeds. Thus deracinated, how long more till the precious national perspective among editors and journalists is eroded?

Fundamentally, what Cheong's considered but radical provocation offers is a corrective that news coverage in Singapore cannot be overly parochial. Mr Lee once told ST editors that Poland's military imposing martial law in 1981 should be given more prominent coverage than his party's announcement of a change in public housing policy after the Anson by-election defeat.

Post-establishment of ST as a public good, more than ever ST's mission has to lie in explaining Singapore and the world to Singaporeans, and only secondarily Singapore to the rest of the mildly interested world. Like the fiction Cheong cites, the press, even as it stops using ink as the main implement, is, too, thick in the midst of forging Singapore's soul so that the country is no mere hotel.