What can we recover after a life passes on? A novel about love, forgetting and remembering. Pansy Lim, a Peranakan girl, was brought up in a seaside village in colonial Singapore in the 1940s. She inherits her mother's love for flowers, nature, the sea, and their healing qualities. Educated by English nuns, she learns and grows to love English, literature and poetry. We see her at the start of the novel, aged, forgetful, and desperately clinging to memories of her recently deceased husband. Through her recollections, she remembers George Chan, the village life that they shared, and the communal past left behind by a nation always on the move.

Sequel to Josephine Chia's 2014 Singapore Literature prize-winning book, Kampong Spirit - Gotong Royong: Life in Potong Pasir, 1955 to 1965. Kampong life in Singapore did not end in 1965 with her independence. In Josephine Chia's new collection of non-fiction stories, the phasing out of attap-thatched villages, the largest mass movement in Singapore, is set against the backdrop of significant national events. Weaving personal tribulations—her teenage angst—and the experiences of villagers from her kampong, Josephine skilfully parallels the hopes and challenges of a toddling nation going through the throes of industrialisation and rapid changes from 1966 to 1975. These delightful, real-life stories, sprinkled with snippets of her Peranakan culture, reveal the joie-de-vivre of gotong royong or community spirit, despite impoverished conditions, in the last days of kampong life.

Frog Under A Coconut Shell means in Malay, "Katuk Bawah Tempurong", an idiom which likens someone to a frog that lives under a coconut shell, who believes the shell to be its entire world. It is a reference to the author's own mother, who although herself uneducated and living in a parochial existence in a small kampong (attap village), believed in and struggled for a greater vision—the right to educate her daughter. The author beautifully evokes the experience of living with her family in rural Potong Pasir of the 1950s and 60s, and paints in heartwarming detail, her mother's life journey from the bloom of her youth to her present affliction with Alzheimer's disease. In part a nostalgic memoir of Old Singapore, Frog Under A Coconut Shell, is also, most wholeheartedly, a testament to the love and courage of a mother that changed the life of her daughter forever.

The most significant aspect of living in a kampong was its kampong spirit—or gotong royong. Though deprived of modern comforts like electricity or running water, multi-racial neighbours lived harmoniously with each other in their attap villages, had a wonderful zest for life and a strong sense of community. Kampong Spirit brings to life the colourful characters of the villagers with whom the Peranakan author, Josephine Chia, grew up at a kampong in Potong Pasir. The period 1955 to 1965 was also a dramatic era for Singapore. As the country struggled towards nationhood, the social and political events of this time and their effects are seen through the eyes of the common folk. This collection of delightful, real life short stories will take you through Singapore's history and heritage at a human level. For some, it will be a journey of discovery and for others it will be a time of reminiscing for those nostalgic years.