Few challenges come tougher for a writer, especially in Singapore, than being asked to write a short story about homosexuality - then to read it in public ... to members of a church.
That was the request made to author Suchen Christine Lim by the Free Community Church, one of the few places open to gay and straight worshippers in a city state where homosexual sex can still lead to prison time.
So on Christmas Day 2005, Lim read The Morning After, the story of a young man telling his mother he's gay, told from the mother's perspective. It's a familiar tale for Lim, herself the mother of a gay son. After the reading, she says, there was silence. 'I knew the audience was listening to this story, but I didn't know it would be accepted with so much depth and feeling,' she says.
'The first time I read it was at a special service in the chamber of Old Parliament House, where the government used to sit. I read, and the place was filled to standing-room only. At the end there was 30 seconds of silence followed by tremendous applause. I was told there were men crying because Christmas can be the loneliest time for gay men.'
Lim's latest book is titled The Lies That Build a Marriage, a collection of 10 short stories that deals with subjects such as homosexuality, cross-dressing, adultery and prostitution, all in a Singaporean context. The author says the stories are based on true events witnessed either personally or by people she knows. It's not her intention to court controversy, but to point out that there are people and practices her book jacket describes as the 'unsung, unsaid and uncelebrated in Singapore'.
Born in Malaysia in 1948, Lim moved to Singapore when she was 14 and the city was still under British control. She admits to harbouring strong feelings against the colonial administration, describing herself as a 'failed would-be romantic revolutionary'.
'In those days as an undergrad I never dreamed of being a writer,' says Lim at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.