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In this internationally acclaimed novel, available now for the first time in North America, Goh Poh Seng explores the complex lives and human relationships of two men in modern Singapore. Ong Kian Teck, a gifted, hard-working creative designer in an advertising firm, is the epitome of the "successful" Singaporean. Chan Kok Leong, an accounts clerk, is striving to free himself from the drudgery of his job and the tedious life he shares with his parents in their small high-rise flat in Toa Payoh. The stories of these two men are interwoven as they try, in different ways, to break loose from what they perceive as the monotony of their lives by reaching for the "light" -- like the jute moths that flutter around the light for one glorious night before they hurl themselves against the heat of the lamps and perish.