Little Ironies: Stories of Singapore is a collection of seventeen short stories

Short Stories

Short Stories may refer to:*A plural for Short story*Short Stories , an American pulp magazine published from 1890-1959*Short Stories, a 1954 collection by O. E...

 by Singapore

Singapore

Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...

 author Catherine Lim

Catherine Lim

Catherine Lim is a best-selling Singaporean fiction author known for writing about Singapore society and of themes of traditional Chinese culture. Hailed as the "doyenne of Singapore writers", Lim has published nine collections of short stories, five novels, two poetry collections and numerous...

. It was first published in 1978 by Heinemann

Heinemann (book publisher)

Heinemann is a UK publishing house founded by William Heinemann in Covent Garden, London in 1890. On William Heinemann's death in 1920 a majority stake was purchased by U.S. publisher Doubleday. It was later acquired by commemorate Thomas Tilling in 1961...

and earned for the writer much accolades. It is Lim's first published book of fiction. Little Ironies was later used as a set text for GCE 'O' Levels under Cambridge Examinations Syndicate. It is also the first collection of short stories to be written by a single author in Singapore.

The Stories

Written with wit and deliberate irony, Little Ironies may best be described as a collection of vignettes concerning modern Singapore life, mostly involving the Singaporean Chinese community. In each of the stories there is an ironic twist which recreates the stark and realistic modern life of the 1970s, informed by superstition, ignorance, snobbery and materialism.