Sati

Nominated for the Singapore Literature Prize in 2024

“A woman is a cursed creature.”

Rina has heard this all her life — spoken by her beloved mother, a soft messenger for a sharp message. Words that echoed in the marrow of every choice Rina made. It became the kind of curse that hid in plain sight.

In a house weighted by tradition, Rina, a devoted wife and mother, tends to a sister with a child’s mind while raising her two teenage children straining against their inherited roles. It is when her husband Salim names their son Kabir the heir, and tells their daughter Noori that her place is elsewhere that Rina begins to understand the workings of this curse.

Rina watches the same story tighten around the next generation — and recognises it for what it is: a legacy of shrinking.

But there is only so much you can shrink before you cease to exist. And so, in whispered rebellions and quiet refusals, in dreams that refuse to be dismissed, Rina, Kabir, and Noori begin to tug at the threads holding their world in place.