How to Hunger

A COLLECTION OF JUICY TALES ABOUT INDIVIDUALS HUNGERING FOR A BETTER LIFE In the terrain of untidy relationships lies an ensemble of individuals coupled or alone, each driven by desire, cravings, or folly. How To Hunger is a smorgasbord of short stories about how humans hunger—for love, lust, and loyalty—where their voracity for the ordinary and sublime consumes them to the very end. A Singapore emigrant chews over her sense of belonging. A vegetarian Western tourist finds a meatier version of Asia in a massage parlour. A young couple deepens their romance through home-cooked cuisine. A friendship between Taiwanese and Singaporeans ages over a decade like fine wine. An office worker’s submerged desires bubble over in a hotpot restaurant. A married woman is tempted by the sweet gifts of a suitor. An undertaker gets a taste of a spicy side of life. And a widower gets triggered by the scent of a curry puff.

Grace Chia is an author of over ten books of prose and poetry. She has been nominated for the Mslexia Novel Competition and Epigram Books Fiction Prize longlists and shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize (Poetry) and Singapore Book Awards, the latter for her Penguin Random House novel, The Arches of Gerrard Street. Her other novels are The Wanderlusters and White Cloud Mountain. Her poetry collections are Mother of All Questions, Cordelia, and Womango, from which her poems have been used in classroom teaching. In her free time, she enjoys baking or watching cat videos.