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 Lovelier, Lonelier, the message, if anything, is that suffering is cyclical. Pain is cyclical. In a work that could allow me to bend genres and dip my toes into science fiction, I realised science fiction,…