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First published in 1978 by Pan Pacific Book Distributors, Ricky Star is about a man who strives for career and financial success at the expense of everyone else around him, including even his wife and daughter. At first successful in his endeavour to climb a series of corporate ladders and becoming very rich, Ricky is, in the end, forced to reckon with his past misdeeds and indiscretions.
“For contemporary readers in Singapore, Lim’s novel anchors us—perhaps for the first time—in a particular historical period that is growing ever more remote. Like all anchors, it causes us to pause, snagging on obstinate histories and memories, and making us look again, more deeply, at a period and a way of life which we might otherwise pass with only a brief backward glance.”
—Professor Philip Holden, National University of Singapore, from the introduction
Lim Thean Soo was a civil servant most of his life and was Comptroller of Customs in Singapore. He has published novels, books of short stories and a volume of poems. He describes his first novel Southward Lies the Fortress (1971) as a ‘history in novel form’ about the Japanese seige and eventual conquest of Singapore. The poems are collected in The Liberation of Lily and Other Poems. Of his many short stories, 'The Expatriate' is published in ONE: the Anthology (2012) edited by Robert Yeo.

Authors

Ricky Star