Daryl Qilin Yam is the author of "Shantih Shantih Shantih", which inspired our book and scent kit released in 2021. Here, you'll find his other awarded titles.
Lovelier, Lonelier It wasn’t love, really. They were just trying to make something out of their lives. Kyoto, 1996, during the passing of Comet Hyakutake: A runaway from Singapore discovers a woman crying in front of a train station at 5.46am. A Straits Times journalist later arrives with her gallerist friend from Madrid, dreading the reenactment of her mother’s performance art. The lives of these four friends—Isaac, Tori, Jing and Mateo—become entangled as a result of one madcap weekend, when fireworks are inexplicably shot over the Kamo River and people become swept to alternate worlds via public transport. Daryl Qilin Yam’s genre-defying second novel ranges across countries and decades, charting the tributaries of pain we thread with our friends and the arcs of the many stories we tell in order to live.
Shantih Shantih Shantih
An art student chances upon a former fling at Punggol MRT station. A reporter lies awake at four in the morning, chronically unable to sleep. Two men lie in bed, watching YouTube videos of hail falling in Singapore, while a sugar baby trawls through Google Maps, exploring the homes and neighbourhoods of her former clients.
In this novella by Daryl Qilin Yam, a dozen lonely individuals in Singapore witness a freakish instance of snowfall, lasting for exactly four minutes and twenty-six seconds. Shantih Shantih Shantih is a heady mix of desire and dauntlessness that revels in its interconnections, pulling together a community that is at once together and apart.
Book & Scent set available here: https://scentoryhk.com/collections/scent-book-projects/products/scentofsnow
Kappa Quartet
Kevin is a young man without a soul, holidaying in Tokyo; Mr Five, the enigmatic kappa, is the man he so happens to meet. Little does Kevin know that kappas—the river demons of Japanese folklore—desire nothing more than the souls of other humans.
Set between Singapore and Japan, Kappa Quartet is split into eight discrete sections, tracing the rippling effects of this chance encounter across a host of other characters, connected and bound to one another in ways both strange and serendipitous. Together they ask one another: what does it mean to be in possession of something nobody has seen before?
About DARYL QILIN YAM
Daryl Qilin Yam (b. 1991) is a writer, editor and arts organiser from Singapore. He is the author of the novella Shantih Shantih Shantih (2021), shortlisted for the 2022 Singapore Literature Prize, and the novel Lovelier, Lonelier (2021), the Singapore nominee for the 2023 International Dublin Literary Award. He co-founded the literary charity Sing Lit Station. His writing has appeared in periodicals and publications such as the Berlin Quarterly, Mekong Review, Sewanee Review, The Straits Times and The Epigram Books Collection of Best New Singapore Short Stories anthology series. His first novel, Kappa Quartet (2016), was selected by The Business Times as one of the best novels of the year, and described by QLRS as “[breaking] new ground in Singaporean writing… a shimmering and poignant novel, an immensely sympathetic and humane exploration of our existential condition.” The American edition of Lovelier, Lonelier is forthcoming from Gaudy Boy in Jan 2024. Yam’s fourth book, a short story collection, is forthcoming from Epigram Books in late 2024.
