ESQUIRE: What key messages do you wish to convey through your new books, Shantih Shantih Shantih and Lovelier, Lonelier respectively?
DARYL QILIN YAM: When I wrote Shantih Shantih Shantih, my primary aim with the novella was to create something less narrative and more experiential—something that really coasted along the lines of thought, realisation, epiphany, surprise. I wanted it to capture a truly cosmopolitan sense of Singapore: a place on earth that was wildly diverse and home to all kinds of people, all of them with agency and bearing their own incredible points of view.
With , the message, if anything, is that suffering is cyclical. Pain is cyclical. functions really as a blip in time, an opportunity for these characters of mine to be engrossed in the minutiae of their own desires and problems, while also afforded a kind of glimpse into a wider view of reality that completely changes their understanding of how the world really works.
