How We Live Now: Stories of Daily Living

Book excerpt: How We Live Now offers a multi-faceted, multi-voiced view of contemporary life in Singapore: its comforts and conflicts, personal tragedies and social tensions, and also opportunities for joy, hope and empathy. Featuring an exciting ensemble of both established and new writers, the stories invite readers to think seriously about the world around them, with urgent contemporary challenges such as social inequality and mental health, as well as age-old frictions in personal relationships and friendships. As this slate of characters grapples with crisis, loss, and what it means to hold each other close in a rapidly changing Singapore, we are invited to ponder: if this is indeed how we live now, should we continue in this vein?