About
Insisting on collective and common memories, Floating Clouds Beyond the Elastic Limit champions a new national literature grounded in the histories of a restless tribe, we who have found a home away from home.
Xi Ni Er’s poetry is alive with awareness of locality and origins – this awareness feeds the present, the future and the past in his work. Wide-ranging in their sweep, the poems go into historical and societal themes, reflecting deep concern and anxiety for the people, the happenings and the objects in a floating city, a transient life, and a pitiless history.
Author
Xi Ni Er
Translator
Shelly Bryant, Tender Leaves Translation
Editor
Ng Kah Gay
Cover Design
June Lin
About the Author
Chia Hwee Pheng writes under the pen name of Xi Ni Er (希尼尔). He won the Singapore Literature Prize in 2008 and 2022, received the Cultural Medallion in 2008, the SEA Write Award in 2009, and the World Chinese Mini-Fiction Biennial Awards in 2014, 2016 and 2018. His 13 publications include The Stretched Credulity (poetry), The Earnest Mask (mini-fiction) and The Floating Republic (flash fiction). He is currently Honorary President of the Singapore Association of Writers and Vice-President of the World Chinese Mini-Fiction Research Association.
About the Translator
Shelly Bryant divides her year between Shanghai and Singapore, working as a poet, writer, and translator. She is the author of twelve volumes of poetry, a pair of travel guides, a book on classical Chinese gardens, and a short story collection, and she has translated more than 150 books from the Chinese. Her translation of Sheng Keyi’s Northern Girls was long-listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2012, and her translation of You Jin’s In Time, Out of Place was shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize in 2016. Her company, Tender Leaves Translation (Singapore), was shortlisted for The Literary Translation Initiative Award by the London Book Fair in 2021.
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