Catherine Lim Tells It Like It Is

This is just to give you an idea of how volatile writers like myself are and how our minds go tuk-tuk-tuk like fireworks all the time.

Singaporean author Catherine Lim is interviewed by Seth Mydans in The International Herald Tribune today in a piece entitled With a Smile, a Writer who Vexes the Men who Run Singapore.

It isn't online (which is strange)* so I have scanned it (albeit a bit clumsily in two parts) and you can read it by clicking it up to size.



Lim is described as :

... a leading voice for liberalism.

and famously a thorn in the side of Singaporean politicians. (Her latest run-in with Lee Kuan Yew is reported here.) Mydan's piece points out that Singaporean newspapers shy away from publishing some of Lim's more pointed views, and so like all subversives worth their salt she blogs them.

One post well worth reading on her blog is Kenneth Paul Tan's study about Lim's ongoing duel with the government, Who's Afraid of Catherine Lim? Her talk on Humour, Wit and satire as Tools of the Political Critic is also well worth watching. (Check out the cartoon and the quotes on the Blinking Brink blog.)

I'm much amused to hear that Lim's latest job is professional lecturer on cruise ships (e.g.) where she dresses up in her cheongsam and tells stories about :

... men and women and ghosts.

She's a very gifted raconteur, and I really loved meeting her a couple of year's back at the Ubud Writer's Festival. She appears at the Singapore Writers Festival (24 Oct - 1 November, 2009). And really, we must persuade her up to KL soon.

* It is online a day later at The New York Times. Thanks Fionally who told me via Twitter.