~ Ng Yi-Sheng
recipient of the Singapore Literature Prize
Full of grief, Singaporean history, printing press lore and sweet memories of love, to read Contact With Shadow is to experience loss– and redemption.
The story: a Cambridge research student comes to Singapore to learn about the island’s pre-Linotype printing history. His wife, an amateur chef, is killed by lightning. Overwhelmed with a sense of loss, he struggles to write his thesis. More often than not, his words are about the woman he loved. A bureaucratic “assistant” enters the picture, as does a Hollywood producer…
Contact With Shadow is an experience, not just a reading experience.
Artist/writer Stephen Black has also written Furikake, Obama Search Words, Bali Wave Ghost, and I Ate Tiong Bahru, a bestseller in Singapore.His visual works have been shown in galleries and museums worldwide. With Eugene Soh, he produced Spoken, a revolutionary virtual gallery.