A pirate in the waters off Indonesia confronts her past and an unwanted pregnancy. Coffeeshop denizens puzzle over an elderly Jewish man's attachment to a piece of soap. A Chinese typesetter gets swept up in political winds of change in 1950s Malaya. A prosthetics engineer falls in love with a dancer, both of them outsiders in Boston, dreaming of taking flight. This new short story collection from a Singapore Literature Prize-shortlisted writer is a panoply of surprising voices.