cover image A Candle or the Sun

A Candle or the Sun

Gopal Baratham. Serpent's Tail, $15.99 (224pp) ISBN 978-1-85242-225-7

Hernie Perera supervises the furniture department of the oldest store in Singapore and writes on the side. His heretofore uneventful life changes pace when he leaves his job because his store merges with another firm and enters mass marketing. At the same time, Hernie learns his father is dying of cancer and his mistress is continuing to associate with an unorthodox Christian group bent on defying the repressive regime. Worse, his mistress says she plans to follow the group leader into voluntary exile. Angered by her betrayal, Hernie accepts a friend's offer of a job writing for the government in exchange for passing information about the Christian group; soon he realizes he has made a devil's bargain. Though aspects of Hernie's character go unexplained (one wonders why he views his parents with such condescension: They were clearly in the middle of a Fred-and-Clara-Perera-face-death-together sequence) and subplots prove distracting, the controversial author convincingly portrays Hernie's fanatical government boss while damning the perverted society that bred him. Baratham is a Singapore neurosurgeon. (Sept.)