Spider Boys

Written entirely in the street-slang English that is one of the author's native languages, this hypnotic first novel gives a provocative and moving look at the real lives of the street kids of the Third World. Set in the 1950s Singapore, Spider Boys is a devastating portrait of youth that will bring to mind Lord of the Flies and Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha-- but with a raw Southeast Asian flavor that is without precedent in Modern writing.

Ming Cher takes the reader inside a world where power and prestige are won by scrounging through the underbrush to find the spiders that can be trained to kill or cripple the prize spiders of boys from other gangs. A novel of betrayal and violence and love, full of teenage sex and dazzling magical realism, Spider Boys chronicles the lives of children who must decide whether to give up everything of stop at nothing to get what they need in their violent and unpredictable world.