The Dogs

In The Dogs, a middle-aged man, Guan, decides to move back into the flat that once belonged to his late father. Guan sells off his own flat and, in the process, estranges himself from his own son, who questions his father’s sudden decision.

While trying to settle in and to make sense of the new surroundings, Guan slowly gets to know the residents in the block and becomes acquainted with a neighbour, a lonely old man who dresses in his dead wife’s clothes. As Guan explores and discovers more of the estate he lives in, he starts to have flashbacks about his past, vividly remembering his childhood in a kampong in Singapore in the 1950s, and his once close friendship with schoolmate Heng Chong, whose baby sister died a mysterious death—an event that the boys were determined to solve. In trying to find the truth, Guan and Henry both found their friendship was slowly being tested. The arrival of a stray dog in their kampong eventually proved to be the catalyst that sparked off a chain of events that led to the dissolution of their friendship, and the unforeseen death of a loved one that cast a long, indelible shadow over Guan’s life.

As Guan looks back into the past to find the answers to the mystery that surrounding this tragic death, he also learns to cope with his own personal losses and finds ways to redeem himself from his past acts. In the act of negotiating his past and his pain, Guan finds new hopes in his solitude, and a new life he’s slowly building with hard-won resilience, fortitude and purpose.