Spider Boys
Ming Cher
Singapore: Epigram Books, 2012
ISBN: 9789810726874

In the 1950s, the street boys of Singapore caught and bet on their wrestling spiders, gaining not only money but also power and prestige as they won. Backgrounded against age-old vices, superstitions, urban legends, as well as a dangerous world of youth gangs and a tumultuous period in Singapore’s history, Spider Boys is a moving and sensual story that draws the reader into turning its pages as if by a beguiling, hypnotic force, alternating arousing and repelling him.

First published by Penguin, New Zealand, in 1995, Spider Boys has been re-edited to not only retain the flavour of colloquial Singapore English in the dialogues, but also improve the accessibility of the novel for all readers by rendering the narrative into grammatical Standard English.