Catherine Lim (simplified Chinese: 林 宝 音 ;

pinyin: Lín Bǎoyīn) 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 political commentaries to date.
Her social commentary in 1994, titled The PAP
and the people - A Great Affective Divide and
published in The Straits Times criticised the
ruling political party's agendas.
She was born in the town of Kulim in Malaysia, and
studied in the Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus.
She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from the
University of Malaya in 1963. She immigrated to
Singapore in 1967 at the age of 26, where she
continued to work and furthered her post-graduate
education in University of Singapore. In 1988, she
received her PhD in Applied Linguistics from the
National University of Singapore, and attended
Columbia University and the University of
California, Berkeley, in 1990 as a Fulbright
Scholar. She had also worked as a teacher, and
later, as project director with the Curriculum
Development Institute of Singapore and a specialist
lecturer with the Regional English Language
Centre, teaching Socio-Linguistics and Literature.
In 1992, she left her professional career to become
a full-time writer. Since then, Lim was made a
Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the
French government in 2003 and as an ambassador
of the Hans Christian Andersen Foundation in
Copenhagen in 2005. She was also honored with an
Honorary Doctorate in Literature from Murdoch
University and Southeast Asia Write Award
Lim published her first short story collection called
Little Ironies: Stories of Singapore (1978), which
showed the wit with which Lim is able to portray
Singaporean society. A succeeding collection, Or
Else, the Lightning God and other Stories, was
published in 1980. Another story collection that
followed in this tradition was O Singapore: Stories
in Celebration from 1988. Her first novel was
published in 1982 and it was entitled The Serpent's
Tooth. Other popular books that have been
published since then were The Bondmaid (1995)
and Following the Wrong God Home (2001). Her
major theme in her stories is the role of women in
traditional Chinese society and culture. In 1998
Lim was awarded the Montblanc-NUS Centre for
the Arts Literary Award and in 1999 she received
the S.E.A. Write Award.

In 2000, she worked with the now-defunct web

portal Lycos Asia to pen an e-novella. The effort
was called Leap of Love and was sold online (at 19
cents a chapter) before it was published by Horizon
Books in 2003. It was released as the film The Leap
Years by Singapore's Raintree Pictures in 2008. It
is directed by Jean Yeo and stars Wong Li-Lin and
Ananda Everingham.

Her best-selling novel, The Bondmaid (which sold

75,000 copies) was initially said to be produced as a
film by Hong Kong director, Stanley Kwan, of 'Lan
Yu' fame, starring Fann Wong. Confirmation of the
production eventually waned off.
Career as a writer
Lim is an accomplished and critically acclaimed
author who has written more than nine collections
of short stories, five novels and a book on poems.
She is best known for her collection of short stories
Little Ironies: Short Stories of Singapore and Or
Else, the Lightning God and Other Stories. Both
collections had the distinction of being selected as
literature texts for the international GCE O' Level
Examinations managed by Cambridge University.
Her first publication, Little Ironies: Short Stories of
Singapore propelled her into the local literary scene
and became an instant best-seller. Her works have
since then been published internationally, including
in France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Israel, Italy,
the Netherlands, Spain, the UK and USA. They are
also studied as literature text in schools and
universities.
Upon becoming a full-time writer, Lim gave talks
regularly at local and international seminars,
conferences, arts/ writers' festivals and even on
cruise ships worldwide. She has appeared on radio
and television programmes in Singapore, Europe
and Australia. Some of her popular discussion
topics include The Magic of Storytelling, the
Supernatural in Chinese Culture: Its use in Fiction,
and Problems, Perils, Promises: The unique
experience of Singapore. She has also written
numerous articles and commentaries on
contemporary and cultural issues in local and
international newspapers.

For her literary contribution, Lim was awarded

several local and regional book prizes, including the
National Book Development Council (NBDCS)
awards in 1982, 1988 and 1990. In 1998, she
received the Montblanc-NUS Centre for the Arts
Literary Award followed by the regional Southeast
Asian Write Award the next year. She was
conferred with an Honorary Doctor of Literature by
Murdoch University, Australia and a Knight of the
Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of
Culture and Information in 2000 and 2003
respectively.

In addition, Lim became the first Singaporean

author to have an electronic-novella, Love's Lonely
Impulses, on the internet hosted by LycosAsia in
2000. More recently, local film producer Raintree
Pictures is in the process of adapting two of her
works, The Leap of Love and the Bondmaid into
movies. Lim has also been appointed Ambassador
for the Hans Christen Andersen Foundation,
Copenhagen for 2005.

Quotes from Catherine Lim

"I write because I enjoy it. I write about things

that interest me- human behaviors, human
relationships, the not-so-pleasant abilities
people posses to deceive one another, seek
revenge, inflict pain. And their capacity to bear
it all as well"

"I draw my inspiration and material from life

around me; from people I've known".

"I love anything that is human, anything that

defines us as human beings with all our flaws,
all our struggles, but the thing that I'm most
inspired by, the thing that is the whole basis of
my spirituality is the conviction that our human
spirit will transcend in the end all our little
faults and feelings”
Collection of short stories
1978 : Little Ironies: Stories of Singapore.
1980 : Or Else, The Lightning God and Other Stories.
1983 : They Do Return...but Gently Lead Them Back.
1987 : The Shadow of a Shadow of a Dream: Love
Stories of Singapore.
1989 : O Singapore! : Stories in Celebration.
1992 : Deadline for Love and Other Stories.
1993 : The Best of Catherine Lim.
1993 : Meet Me on the Queen Elizabeth 2!.
1993 : The Woman's Book of Superlatives.
1999 : The Howling Silence: tales of the dead and their
return.
1999 : Women in Bondage: The Stories of Catherine Lim.

Novels:
• The Serpent's Tooth, Times Books International,
Singapore, 1982
• The Bondmaid, self-published, 1995 (Orion 1997;
foreign edns 1997, 1998)
• The Teardrop Story Woman, Orion, London, 1998
• Following the Wrong God Home, Allen & Unwin,
London, 2001
• Leap of Love, Horizon Books, Singapore, 2003 (a
novella)
• The Song of Silver Frond, Orion, London, 2003
Poetry
• Love's Lonely Impulses, Heinemann Asia, Singapore, 1992
• Humoresque, Horizon Books, Singapore, 2006

Non-fiction
• Unhurried Thoughts At My Funeral, Horizon Books,
Singapore, 2005

Little Ironies: Short Stories of Singapore, Heinemann, 1978.

This is my first book, the one that launched me on the road
to authorhood. The 17 short stories are about ordinary men
and women living their ordinary lives, often with a
determination that is no less than extraordinary—the woman
desperate to have a male child to appease her tradition-
bound husband, the young student who jumps to her death
after her poor exam results, the savvy Singlish-speaking taxi
driver who makes extra money looking out for male
Caucasian tourists to take them to the city’s brothels.

Or Else, the Lightning God and Other Stories, Heinemann, 1980

Encouraged by the warm reception of Little Ironies, I

set out to do another collection of short stories. Once
again, I present a succession of vignettes of ordinary
people one meets with daily in the wet market, the
bus stop, the groceries’ store. The last story which
provides the title for the collection, reflects an
enduring theme in my short stories—the conflict
between tradition and modernity, as seen when the
uneducated, elderly woman, suddenly finds the
temerity to rise against her intimidating English-
educated, career-minded daughter-in-law, calling
upon the Lightning God to strike her dead for
committing the greatest sin—ill-treating the old.

The Serpent’s Tooth: A Novel, Times Books International, 1982

This is my first novel, in which I present the conflicts
experienced in a family, against a backdrop of Asian
superstitions, myths and legends. The theme is the
fearful dereliction that is visited upon the younger
generation when the primary Confucianist injunction
—’Honour thy father and thy mother through filial
piety’—is ignored. The title is taken from
Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’, where the old king, after
being abandoned by his daughters, curses them and
cries out, ‘Sharper than a serpent’s tooth/ It is to
have a thankless child!’

They Do Return—Stories of the Supernatural, Times Books

International, 1983
These 15 short stories are ghost stories, not the usual
supernatural stories of violent hauntings and visitations, but
quiet, even mundane tales that examine how people cope
with their traditional beliefs about death. The dead seem to
have been suddenly transformed into powerful beings who
can reach beyond the grave to affect their lives. The result is
a conflict of emotions—the fearful realization that those who
have died do return, the urgent need to placate them if they
are angry and to help them on their journey home if they are
lost and still wandering restlessly on the face of the earth.
But the ultimately reassuring emotion must be this: that the
ties of love and caring will never be severed by death.
The Woman’s Book of Superlatives, Times Books International,
1993
A young girl squirms and hunches, hoping her father will stop gazing at
her growing breasts. A wife tightens her arms around her abdomen to
protect her unborn baby from the blows of her drunken husband.

Is suffering the fate of women? Is their lot simply to endure with

equanimity? This is a book where my feminist instincts and emotions
are at their strongest. I have taken the liberty of shocking the reader
by prefacing each sad story with an excerpt from an ancient myth or
legend in which woman is glorified and deified: the contrast between
the idealized woman of mythology and the battered woman of reality is
surely obscene. I have tried to keep my anger down, and my tone quiet,
although I have not resisted the bitter sarcasm of the title. Yes, it’s a
woman’s book of superlatives, but only of the superlatives of suffering
and endurance.

The Best of Catherine Lim, Heinemann, 1993

The 12 short stories in this collection were selected from my

books published over a period of 15 years, up to 1993. They
are supposed to represent me at my best, that is, as a keen,
clear-eyed, unsentimental observer of the faults, follies and
foibles of men and women in their everyday lives, but at the
same time, as one capable of showing a true and
sympathetic understanding of the essential vulnerability of
the human heart. This engagement of both head and heart
gives me an ironic vision, which in turn gives each of my
stories a kind of creative tension.

The Howling Silence, Horizon Books, Singapore, 1999

The living and the dead—there is something that binds them. For the
living are endlessly fascinated by tales of the dead, whether they are
about an ancestor whose ghost reputedly haunts an old ancestral
house, or an airline pilot whose ghost is forever condemned to roam
the earth with that of his mistress for an unspeakably cruel suicide pact
that plunges a hundred others to their deaths.

The dead too appear to be fascinated by the living. They want to come
back to reassure, console, seek revenge, and seek forgiveness or simply
to connect across an immense gulf of darkness and mystery. Death may
bring silence but it is a howling silence with the urgent needs, hopes,
desires and torments on both sides.

Unhurried Thoughts at My Funeral, Horizon Books, Singapore,

2005

This book is part autobiography, part fiction and part polemics. I

portray myself as dead and lying in my coffin. During the three days
before the final consignment to dust and oblivion, as friends, relatives,
ex-colleagues, fans, lovers and total strangers come to pay their
respects, I indulge, for the last time, my love of story-telling, weaving a
dazzling, dizzying tale around each visitor. But the tales are more than
just that. They are the triggering points for the central concern of this
book—the exploration of those achingly urgent human questions that
everyone asks at some time or other: Who are we? Where did we come
from? What is the purpose of life? What happens after death?
The Bondmaid, Catherine Lim Publishing, UK, USA, France, the  
Netherlands, Germany, Israel, Greece, Italy, Spain, Iceland, 1995

This is my first internationally published novel.

Set in Singapore in the early 1950s, The Bondmaid captures the special 
ethos of a wealthy and powerful Chinese household in that bygone 
era.

A little girl, Han, is sold as a bondmaid into the House of Wu, where 
she grows up with the young heir. But the idyll of childhood 
attachment quickly turns into a nightmare of thwarted sexual 
passion, as Han, beautiful, proud and uncompromisingly loyal, 
defies the forces of tradition and tyranny in a household where 
patriarchs and matriarchs wield inexorable power, lustful male 
relatives watch young bondmaids to claim their rightful share of 
pleasure and gods and goddesses smile to see the human drama 
unfold. The Bondmaid chronicles the strength of one woman’s love—
right to its terrifying climax.