Two Figures in a Car and Other Stories

Two figures sit in a car, waiting to commit a crime. A young girl steals her grandmother’s jade bracelet. A Malay man collects the blonde hair of a British teenager he is transfixed with, and a young woman feeds human blood to a frangipani tree. There’s right and wrong in this world. Or is there? This collection of fourteen stories explores the grey and amoral lives of ordinary – and not so ordinary – Malaysians and Singaporeans looking to carve their place in the world. Shifting between the dark hills of Penang island to the lonely coasts of Singapore and the cramped corners of Kuala Lumpur and Manchester, Two Figures in a Car is coloured with petty crimes, small ambitions and fantastical delusions.

Wan Phing Lim was born to Malaysian parents in 1986 in Butterworth, Penang. Her short stories have appeared in Catapult (USA), Ricepaper Magazine (Canada), Lucent Dreaming (UK), Kyoto Journal (Japan) and anthologies by Monsoon Books (UK), Ethos Books (Singapore), Math Paper Press (Singapore) and Fixi Novo (Malaysia). Her story 'Snake Bridge Temple' was selected for Kitaab's Best Asian Short Stories 2017 and Buku Fixi's New Malaysian Writing 2017.