The short story is a form taken up with many local authors. One attempts to anthologise the Singaporean Short Story; featuring twenty-one stories from the likes of S. Rajaratnam, Catherine Lim, Minfong Ho, Kirpal Singh, Colin Cheong and Alfian Sa’at. Named to make a dramatic point, this anthology selects the best from each according to Robert Yeo—an established name in the local literary scene. At its heart, this one story is not intended to be representative of the author’s oeuvre but to discover an instance where an author infuses a story with his or her personality or unique style. The chosen stories are also varied, individually artistically-crafted, and as a whole, display the wide-range of local stories. This way, readers can trace the development of a line of writing over several books and decades. Most importantly, the book shows the developing canon in the Singaporean short story scene and makes a stark statement: these are the twenty-one stories that should stand out and be counted.
