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A tender, piercing short story collection that explores the complexities of existence, alienation and the perpetual search for meaning in our lives.

An elderly widow fantasizes about celebritydom after the death of her husband. An unexpected friendship blossoms between a young boy and his neighbour. A domestic helper hides a dark secret in her employer’s home. A troubled man opens his door to a childhood friend. Set in Singapore, this collection explores the complexities of existence and alienation through diverse narratives, revealing how our deepest pains, while uniquely our own, also reflect a shared human experience of vulnerability, yearning and the perpetual search for meaning in our lives.
“Jinny Koh writes stories of people on society’s edges in all kinds of crises—money, love, grief—and does so with sophistication and tremendous subtlety. Like any artist who has honed her craft to its strongest expression, each story is unlike the other, insightful and deeply moving.”
—Patrick Sagaram, author of In Places We Find Ourselves

“Secrets abound and uneasy desires erupt as characters make difficult, even dangerous choices that shake them to their core. A heartfelt, reflective portrait of quiet but intensely lived lives in contemporary Singapore.”
—Yu-Mei Balasingamchow, author of Names Have Been Changed

“Koh’s prose is stripped bare, restrained and revelatory.”
—Jon Gresham, writer, photographer, and author of Gus: The Life and Opinions of the Last Raffles’ Banded Langur

“Sharp, compassionate and quietly devastating. We Are All Alone in This Anyway is a memorable collection about solitude and survival.”
—Dr Anitha Devi Pillai, poet, translator and author of Sembawang: A Novel

“A kaleidoscopic masterclass in empathy and imagining how other lives are lived.”
—Thammika Songkaeo, author of Stamford Hospital

“Such lives of quiet desperation, and the desperately quiet. Jinny Koh has managed to capture them all, in prose that’s meticulous and measured.”
—Felix Cheong, poet, graphic novelist and author of Be Real
Jinny Koh’s stories and essays have appeared in The Iowa Review, Cream City Review, Pembroke Magazine and Kyoto Journal, among others. She graduated Phi Kappa Phi with a Master of Professional Writing from the University of Southern California, where she served as the Fiction Editor for The Southern California Review. She is the author of The Gods Will Hear Us Eventually (Ethos Books), a creative writing lecturer at the National University of Singapore, and co-founder of Deep Narrative, a content studio specializing in print, digital, and exhibitions.

Authors

We Are All Alone In This Anyway

The Gods Will Hear Us Eventually