The Heart of Summer
Award-winning stories and tales about the rites of passage in our lives-love and loss, gladness and grief, departure and return-written in the realistic and fabulist modes
A young boy and his sisters gather beautiful shells on the beach as mementos of a country they will leave behind. A girl who loves the Beatles sees dwarves that are drawn charcoal-black on a white plate.
A rich matron in Singapore discovers a primeval thing in her ritzy penthouse. A poor woman in the boondocks gives birth to a mudfish. Dead lovers buried beneath a hotel ruined by an earthquake reach out to each other. And a woman poisoned in Scotland centuries ago still haunts a hilltop castle, looking for her dead lover.
These and other memorable characters inhabit Danton Remoto's book of stories and tales. Some of the stories are written in the realistic mode. They poke fun at a colourful but violent dictatorship or track the same-sex love in a young man's heart. The others are written in the fantastic mode-fables, parables, origin tales, cheeky rewriting of rural lore and urban legends. The length of the stories also varies. Some are flash fiction, while the others have the sweep of a novella.
The stories are meant to entertain but also to instruct — why the present is just a re-looping of the past, why love remains constant and true even beyond death. Written with daring and with dash, this book comes from the pen of 'one of Asia's best writers.'
-
Free Shipping for orders $150+
Book Publication Year:
Publishing has a diversity problem. There are less 'diverse' books being published which limits the discoverability and reach of those authors.
Representation is important. Read more about why we exist here.
An anti-racist social enterprise bookstore specialising in BIPOC books.
Only about 11% of books published are by BIPOC authors — so unless you specifically seek out books by BIPOC authors, you aren't likely to find very many of them organically. At Amplify, BIPOC authors are highlighted and celebrated. Here, they don't have to fight to be seen, and you don't have to fight to find them.
We hope that in our shop, you can discover a new favourite read, find stories that speak uniquely to you, learn about a culture outside your own (or more about your own histories), and gain a better understanding of the systems that connect us all.
Looking for something super specific?
Have a scroll through our tag directory to help direct your search and bring you to curated collections, as grouped by subgenres, identity markers, and more!
