The Punkhawala and the Prostitute

Finalist for the 2021 Epigram Books Fiction Prize
Winner of Singapore Book Awards 2022 (Best Book Cover Design)

Look inside the book | Get the e-book | Listen to the audiobook

Behind the golden façade of a land filled with opportunities dwell two destitute souls, shipped to Singapore in the late 1800s. Oseki, an ingenue forced into prostitution as a karayuki, grapples with being betrayed by her own father and transforms into a monster she can’t recognise. Gobind, a deaf convict from India, serves his sentence as a punkhawala to a British hunter obsessed with killing Rimau Satan, a man-eating tiger of mythic proportions. Whenever Gobind hunts with his master, his butchered memories lurk in the darkness, aching to pounce. When Oseki’s and Gobind’s paths intertwine, they begin to face their inner demons to find their humanity—and their way back home.
Wesley Leon Aroozoo is a filmmaker from 13 Little Pictures and a lecturer at LASALLE College of the Arts. He is the author of the novella Bedok Reservoir (2012), which was also adapted for the stage and performed at Goodman Arts Centre. A feature documentary companion to his second non-fiction novella, I Want to Go Home (2017), had its world premiere at the Busan International Film Festival.

$9.41

Original: $26.90

The Punkhawala and the Prostitute—

$26.90

$9.41

Original: $26.90

The Punkhawala and the Prostitute—

$26.90

$9.41

Finalist for the 2021 Epigram Books Fiction Prize
Winner of Singapore Book Awards 2022 (Best Book Cover Design)

Look inside the book | Get the e-book | Listen to the audiobook

Behind the golden façade of a land filled with opportunities dwell two destitute souls, shipped to Singapore in the late 1800s. Oseki, an ingenue forced into prostitution as a karayuki, grapples with being betrayed by her own father and transforms into a monster she can’t recognise. Gobind, a deaf convict from India, serves his sentence as a punkhawala to a British hunter obsessed with killing Rimau Satan, a man-eating tiger of mythic proportions. Whenever Gobind hunts with his master, his butchered memories lurk in the darkness, aching to pounce. When Oseki’s and Gobind’s paths intertwine, they begin to face their inner demons to find their humanity—and their way back home.
Wesley Leon Aroozoo is a filmmaker from 13 Little Pictures and a lecturer at LASALLE College of the Arts. He is the author of the novella Bedok Reservoir (2012), which was also adapted for the stage and performed at Goodman Arts Centre. A feature documentary companion to his second non-fiction novella, I Want to Go Home (2017), had its world premiere at the Busan International Film Festival.