by Clive En-Kai

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Synopsis

“In the midway of this mortal life, I found me in a gloomy wood, astray gone from the path direct...”

When Professor K was asked to attend a conference in Greece, he did not expect the impending journey to unravel the life he shared with J; forcing him to confront the regrets of his past. When Tang finally arrived in England, he did not foresee that a growing obsession with the phoenix would overtake his literary ambition, or that he would meet an intriguing girl, E. In search of a lasting dream, Aporia is the story of two characters journeying into contingent worlds.

About the Author

Clive En-Kai is a Singaporean writer. He studied English Literature at the National University of Singapore. Aporia is his debut novella.

Praise 

“In the contiguous yet mutually distanced lives of his characters, Aporia assembles a space that is at once recognizable and oddly attenuated of ground. Tang’s youthful ‘voyage out’ from a middle-class Singaporean childhood to a university education in England is recalled through humour, ambivalence and, perhaps most memorably, the vague, outspread bruise of home-sickness—captured from a distance, Tang’s localised identity is recovered for readers as both true and obsolete. Tang’s suspended voice intersects with the belated self-discoveries of Professor K, who must undertake his own journey inwards, during the banalities of an academic conference on Homer in Athens. Through the prismatic worlds of Tang and K, dramas of domesticity and displacement are recovered as reflections of each other – in deceptively slender characterizations and through lapidary prose, Clive En-Kai enfolds his readers into a peculiarly evacuated, yet always familiar world of departure and recovery.” 
- Tania Roy, Assistant Professor, English Literature, National University of Singapore

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ISBN: 978-981-08-9809-0
Published: 2011
Dimension: 130mm x 200mm
Extent: 174
Finish: Paperback