By Yong Shu Hoong

If you're familiar with Chinese literature, you would have read, or at least heard of, Dream of the Red Chamber. Written by Cao Xueqin during the Qing Dynasty, it is considered one of China's "Four Great Classical Novels".

In the hands of Singapore writer, Jeremy Tiang, it has morphed into an adapted play, 'A Dream of Red Pavilions', where around 500 characters in the source material are reduced to 18, played by a cast of nine actors. This was staged off-Broadway by Pan Asian Repertory Theatre in 2016.

Aside from playwriting, Tiang is making waves as a fiction author. Set against a turbulent backdrop of political upheavals in Singaporean and Malaysian history, his novel, State of Emergency (2017), was a finalist for the Epigram Fiction Book Prize. His short-story collection, It Never Rains on National Day (2015), was shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize.

Tiang has also translated, from the Chinese language, more than 10 books including novels by Yeng Pway Ngon, Zhang Yueran and Chan Ho-Kei. He is the Asia Literary Editor at the Asian American Writers' Workshop in New York.

1. What are you reading right now?
Kintu, by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi – a great Ugandan novel that tells its story without reference to the Western gaze.

2. If you were a famous literary character in a novel, play, or poem, who would you be, and why?
Most days I feel like Granny Liu from Dream of the Red Chamber. She's just wandering round this big, fancy garden, not really understanding what's going on but so happy to be there.

3. What is the greatest misconception about you?
I don't know what misconceptions people have about me! Anyway, I contain multitudes, so they're probably all true at some level.

4. Name one living author and one dead author you identify with most, and tell us why.
Unhelpfully, I tend to identify most with whichever author I'm translating at the moment. Maybe that's a form of Stockholm syndrome, but living so completely inside their words, it's hard not to get sucked into their minds. Right now I'm working on Yeng Pway Ngon's latest novel, Opera Costume, and a Cao Yu play, so them.

5. Do you believe in writer's block? If so, how do you overcome it?
I usually have a couple of translation projects going on as well, so when I get stuck with the writing, I just move on to translating. If there's such a thing as translator's block, I haven't encountered it yet!

6. What qualities do you admire most in a writer?
Insight and generosity.

7. What is one trait you deplore most in writing or writers?
I try not to deplore anyone or anything. Life's too short.

8. Can you recite your favourite line from a literary work or a piece of advice from a writer?
This is one of those free-floating quotes that I've seen attributed to various writers, but it rings true nonetheless: "Take the work seriously, but never yourself."

9. Complete this sentence: Few people know this, but I…
once played a police corporal in a Channel 5 telemovie. I had maybe three lines – all I had to do was turn up and tell Tan Kheng Hua that there wasn't an intruder in her house. (Spoiler: I was wrong, and the intruder was a ghost. Sorry, Kheng!)

10. At the movies, if you have to pick a comedy, a tragedy, or an action thriller to watch, which will you go for, and why?
Whichever one transcends its genre the most.

11. What is your favourite word, and what is your least favourite one?
I love all words equally.

12. Write a short-short story in three lines that include the following three words: "rain", "state" and "apex".
Amidst torrential rain and ponding, the old house got washed away.
The state, so long supine, could only wring its hands in dismay.
Nature is the apex predator, and will always get its way.

13. What object is indispensable to you when you write?
Is coffee an object? Technically it's only the caffeine that's indispensable, I suppose.

14. What is the best time of the day for writing?
Whenever inspiration strikes! Also, it depends on what I'm writing. Some things need the quiet clarity of morning, others are better suited to the manic energy that hits around 2am.

15. If you had a last supper, which three literary figures, real or fictional, would you invite to the soiree, and why?
I am not very good with human company, but I think it would be fun to hang out with Charlotte from Charlotte's Web, the earthworm from James and the Giant Peach, and Gregor Samsa. Or would Charlotte eat the earthworm? Oh well, he could be her last supper.

16. How do your interests in fiction writing and translation feed off each other?
You know how they say "writing is re-writing"? Translation is also a form of re-writing, only you're taking the baton from someone else rather than your earlier self.

17. What would you write on your own tombstone?
"Not sleeping, just dead."

_____