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Heaven Has Eyes
A teacher and his wife get caught up in the drama of election politics and a Channel 8 soap opera. An invalid house-sits for his sister and has to care for his nephew’s pampered pet pig. A daughter travels overseas to convince her elderly father to move home with her. An academic must navigate an opaque bureaucracy to renew his Re-Entry Permit. A young Lee Kuan Yew finds camaraderie with a future Canadian Prime Minister in England, and relentless tenacity from a British student in Canada desperate for an interview. Heaven Has Eyes dramatises these small moments of transcendence in everyday life, and more.
Philip Holden is a Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the National University of Singapore, and the author of several books of literary criticism and history. Heaven Has Eyes is his first fiction collection.
Philip Holden is a Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the National University of Singapore, and the author of several books of literary criticism and history. Heaven Has Eyes is his first fiction collection.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
272 pages, Paperback
Published September 1, 2016
About the author
Philip Joseph Holden
23 books3 followersSee also: Philip Holden.
Philip Holden was born in Boston in 1962. He grew up in the United Kingdom, and has lived and studied in London, the United States, China, Canada and Taiwan. In 1994 he moved to Singapore, and he currently teaches literary studies at the National University of Singapore.
He is the author of several books of literary criticism and history, focusing on auto/biography, and Singaporean and Southeast Asian literatures; these include the historical anthology Writing Singapore, co-edited with Angelia Poon and Shirley Geok-lin Lim. His short stories have been published in Wasafiri, The Carolina Quarterly, Prism International, QLRS and Cha. Holden has served as Vice President of the Singapore Heritage Society, and Deputy Director of the NUS University Scholars Programme. His first fiction collection is Heaven Has Eyes, published by Epigram Books in 2016.
Philip Holden was born in Boston in 1962. He grew up in the United Kingdom, and has lived and studied in London, the United States, China, Canada and Taiwan. In 1994 he moved to Singapore, and he currently teaches literary studies at the National University of Singapore.
He is the author of several books of literary criticism and history, focusing on auto/biography, and Singaporean and Southeast Asian literatures; these include the historical anthology Writing Singapore, co-edited with Angelia Poon and Shirley Geok-lin Lim. His short stories have been published in Wasafiri, The Carolina Quarterly, Prism International, QLRS and Cha. Holden has served as Vice President of the Singapore Heritage Society, and Deputy Director of the NUS University Scholars Programme. His first fiction collection is Heaven Has Eyes, published by Epigram Books in 2016.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
December 7, 2021
Advance Praise:
“By turns thoughtful, satirical, even dreamlike, these stories delve in and out of memory and alternative histories, capturing misconnections between characters that even include modern Singapore's founding father.”
—Cyril Wong, award-winning author of Ten Things My Father Never Taught Me
“Quiet yet disquieting, these stories shimmer with the unsettling currents that stir beneath the placid surface of Singaporean life, here and elsewhere. Philip Holden's prose, meditative and thoughtful, has a sharp bite to it.”
—Jeremy Tiang, author of It Never Rains on National Day, shortlisted for the 2016 Singapore Literature Prize
“This collection of stories is refreshingly honest and daring in its treatment of Singapore’s history and quotidian life. The stories disturb; they are painfully truthful. This kind of storytelling is what is missing in Singaporean literature.”
—Lily Rose R. Tope, Professor of English, University of the Philippines
“Stories as complex, narrators as multi-lingual, and stylistics as code-switching as the island nation of Singapore from where they come, Philip Holden’s stunning three-decades-long-in-gestation collection is a wholly local-global achievement. His extraordinary multi-layered, poly-vocal, transnational fictions are absolutely worth the wait.”
—Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Commonwealth Poetry Prize and American Book Awards winner, and author of Among the White Moon Faces
“Heaven Has Eyes unfurls a range of complex, uneasy and often difficult-to-define emotions and sensibilities, as well as thoughtfully sculptured scenarios both artfully simple and poetically nuanced. Philip Holden tackles the amnesiac confusion that comes with urban development and rapid change, the sacrifices made for material progress, the liminal suffering of bureaucracy’s insistence on its own schedule, and the anxiety of an increasingly borderless world. These effortlessly universal stories are told skilfully through self-reflexive, post-colonial lenses, stylishly and surgically executed by an insider-outsider storytelling sensibility.”
—Alvin Tan, founder and artistic director of The Necessary Stage
“The complexities of contemporary life in Singapore are revealed in subtle and nuanced ways in Philip Holden's first collection of short stories. Ruminative at times but always insightful, a good read.”
—Suchen Christine Lim, author of The River's Song
“Philip Holden's short stories are delicate, deliberately understated and poignant—but sometimes also pointed, despite a subtle use of irony. The stories range from Singapore to England to western Canada, but the point-of-view is never that of a freewheeling, privileged and rootless cosmopolitanism, but one that offers personal and also political perspectives on the struggles to unroot and to root again the self. The painful details of the quotidian are part and parcel of such struggles. The legacy of colonialism and the Cold War also make its presence felt, as past and present are shown to be linked in a Singaporean society that people like to say is dehistoricised. A few stories enquire: what happens to political idealism? Connections and interconnections are palpable concerns in this at times disquieting short fiction.”
—C.J.W.-L. Wee, author of Culture, Empire, and the Question of Being Modern and Professor of English, Nanyang Technological University
“With a gimlet eye for detail and an instinctive feel for the complex cadences of life, Holden ushers his reader into worlds disconcertingly surreal yet also strangely intimate. His stories—whether set in Singapore, Canada, England or the spaces in between—speak of the (im)possibilities of communication, connection and arrival, hinting at emotional truths always glimmering in the near distance and just out of reach. These are stories which hold you in their thrall because they embody imaginative intelligence leavened with compassion—read them!”
—Angelia Poon, Head of English Language and Literature, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University
“Subtle and profound, this book is a letter to an old lover, carrying in it the intimacy, honesty and tenderness that only those who have truly loved can give.”
—Tan Dan Feng, co-founder of The Select Centre and co-editor of Singapore Shifting Boundaries
“By turns thoughtful, satirical, even dreamlike, these stories delve in and out of memory and alternative histories, capturing misconnections between characters that even include modern Singapore's founding father.”
—Cyril Wong, award-winning author of Ten Things My Father Never Taught Me
“Quiet yet disquieting, these stories shimmer with the unsettling currents that stir beneath the placid surface of Singaporean life, here and elsewhere. Philip Holden's prose, meditative and thoughtful, has a sharp bite to it.”
—Jeremy Tiang, author of It Never Rains on National Day, shortlisted for the 2016 Singapore Literature Prize
“This collection of stories is refreshingly honest and daring in its treatment of Singapore’s history and quotidian life. The stories disturb; they are painfully truthful. This kind of storytelling is what is missing in Singaporean literature.”
—Lily Rose R. Tope, Professor of English, University of the Philippines
“Stories as complex, narrators as multi-lingual, and stylistics as code-switching as the island nation of Singapore from where they come, Philip Holden’s stunning three-decades-long-in-gestation collection is a wholly local-global achievement. His extraordinary multi-layered, poly-vocal, transnational fictions are absolutely worth the wait.”
—Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Commonwealth Poetry Prize and American Book Awards winner, and author of Among the White Moon Faces
“Heaven Has Eyes unfurls a range of complex, uneasy and often difficult-to-define emotions and sensibilities, as well as thoughtfully sculptured scenarios both artfully simple and poetically nuanced. Philip Holden tackles the amnesiac confusion that comes with urban development and rapid change, the sacrifices made for material progress, the liminal suffering of bureaucracy’s insistence on its own schedule, and the anxiety of an increasingly borderless world. These effortlessly universal stories are told skilfully through self-reflexive, post-colonial lenses, stylishly and surgically executed by an insider-outsider storytelling sensibility.”
—Alvin Tan, founder and artistic director of The Necessary Stage
“The complexities of contemporary life in Singapore are revealed in subtle and nuanced ways in Philip Holden's first collection of short stories. Ruminative at times but always insightful, a good read.”
—Suchen Christine Lim, author of The River's Song
“Philip Holden's short stories are delicate, deliberately understated and poignant—but sometimes also pointed, despite a subtle use of irony. The stories range from Singapore to England to western Canada, but the point-of-view is never that of a freewheeling, privileged and rootless cosmopolitanism, but one that offers personal and also political perspectives on the struggles to unroot and to root again the self. The painful details of the quotidian are part and parcel of such struggles. The legacy of colonialism and the Cold War also make its presence felt, as past and present are shown to be linked in a Singaporean society that people like to say is dehistoricised. A few stories enquire: what happens to political idealism? Connections and interconnections are palpable concerns in this at times disquieting short fiction.”
—C.J.W.-L. Wee, author of Culture, Empire, and the Question of Being Modern and Professor of English, Nanyang Technological University
“With a gimlet eye for detail and an instinctive feel for the complex cadences of life, Holden ushers his reader into worlds disconcertingly surreal yet also strangely intimate. His stories—whether set in Singapore, Canada, England or the spaces in between—speak of the (im)possibilities of communication, connection and arrival, hinting at emotional truths always glimmering in the near distance and just out of reach. These are stories which hold you in their thrall because they embody imaginative intelligence leavened with compassion—read them!”
—Angelia Poon, Head of English Language and Literature, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University
“Subtle and profound, this book is a letter to an old lover, carrying in it the intimacy, honesty and tenderness that only those who have truly loved can give.”
—Tan Dan Feng, co-founder of The Select Centre and co-editor of Singapore Shifting Boundaries
June 28, 2017
Curiosity level: Eye-opening albeit eye-closing for some stories
"Her face slowly becoming invisible, written over with layer upon layer of words." - p.55
Philip Holden's anthology of stories is written in a style that strives to combine the Mystical & Poetical with Harsh realities of Everyday life. Because of this, his writing can sometimes feel accurate and amazingly surreal, or it can lose readers in a semi-conscious limbo (I'm guilty of having fallen asleep at some points)
My favourite in the collection is easily "Two Among Many". This tale parallels two lives - one of a drug trafficker & another of the man who condemns these traffickers... the story shows how their lives aren't very different after all...
🏢
"Her face slowly becoming invisible, written over with layer upon layer of words." - p.55
Philip Holden's anthology of stories is written in a style that strives to combine the Mystical & Poetical with Harsh realities of Everyday life. Because of this, his writing can sometimes feel accurate and amazingly surreal, or it can lose readers in a semi-conscious limbo (I'm guilty of having fallen asleep at some points)
My favourite in the collection is easily "Two Among Many". This tale parallels two lives - one of a drug trafficker & another of the man who condemns these traffickers... the story shows how their lives aren't very different after all...
🏢
June 25, 2017
A deftly captured, brilliantly crafted collection.
I cannot agree with the reviews here that propose that this collection is somehow not representative enough of some category of experience, e.g. the Singapore experience.
What I've read is a collection that is deeply invested in representing experiences and identities that are complexly plural - in the cultural and linguistic hybridity of individual characters, but even more interestingly in the border-confounding relationships they have with other characters. These are relationships that cross geographical space and time, but that also happen across the tiny-yet-somehow-greater gaps between characters who live really close together.
I cannot agree with the reviews here that propose that this collection is somehow not representative enough of some category of experience, e.g. the Singapore experience.
What I've read is a collection that is deeply invested in representing experiences and identities that are complexly plural - in the cultural and linguistic hybridity of individual characters, but even more interestingly in the border-confounding relationships they have with other characters. These are relationships that cross geographical space and time, but that also happen across the tiny-yet-somehow-greater gaps between characters who live really close together.
February 7, 2020
Beautiful and heartbreaking stories - must read esp if you know him
October 5, 2025
I really debated what rating to give this collection of stories and have settled on giving it a more generous 4 stars over the 3.5/3.75 I was originally going for. This is for a number of reasons:
1. The nature of the writing is quiet and thoughtful- it talks to others, to you, to a collective and this has a very lulling and delicate effect, particularly given the depth of the themes explored.
2. Is the homage paid to a culture that has been learned, adopted and loved. From the slips to Mandarin throughout to the attention to socio-politics, economics and migration within Singapore and the impact this has externally.
3. The use of personal familiarity- there were parts where I felt I was reading almost an autobiography, the characters reflected Holden's own life and person occupationally, through relationships, through thoughts, etc. I felt his thoughts throughout in each of the stories and I liked this aspect a lot.
I've seen a lot of the reviews giving mediocre ratings for this collection, and while, in some sense, I can understand some of their points, I think that sometimes there is a need to look underneath just 'general entertainment' and 'repetitive situations', and the like, to what is actually being said throughout this collection?, how has the author's experiences shaped them?, what can be taken from all of this?
In doing this, the richness of the collection as a whole, and each individual story deepens considerably. This is why I opted for the higher rating.
Thank you again to NetGalley and publishers GaudyBoy for an arc of this version!
1. The nature of the writing is quiet and thoughtful- it talks to others, to you, to a collective and this has a very lulling and delicate effect, particularly given the depth of the themes explored.
2. Is the homage paid to a culture that has been learned, adopted and loved. From the slips to Mandarin throughout to the attention to socio-politics, economics and migration within Singapore and the impact this has externally.
3. The use of personal familiarity- there were parts where I felt I was reading almost an autobiography, the characters reflected Holden's own life and person occupationally, through relationships, through thoughts, etc. I felt his thoughts throughout in each of the stories and I liked this aspect a lot.
I've seen a lot of the reviews giving mediocre ratings for this collection, and while, in some sense, I can understand some of their points, I think that sometimes there is a need to look underneath just 'general entertainment' and 'repetitive situations', and the like, to what is actually being said throughout this collection?, how has the author's experiences shaped them?, what can be taken from all of this?
In doing this, the richness of the collection as a whole, and each individual story deepens considerably. This is why I opted for the higher rating.
Thank you again to NetGalley and publishers GaudyBoy for an arc of this version!
October 6, 2020
Probably the second worst book I've read this year. I dragged my feet through this collection of short stories. The title of the book links to just one story. I felt that the author was not focused. Many sections of descriptions in all the stories were unnecessary and did not contribute to the development of the plots, which I can only describe as boring. I didn't know what he was getting at. Trying to comment about Singapore's political history, but overly careful about being diplomatic and in the process, coming across as having no opinion. The way the stories are left hanging is not something I like. It's not as if the storylines are that interesting to make me ponder about the possible outcomes.
December 19, 2025
3.5
I approached this collection with a degree of apprehension, particularly when I was met at the outset with a glossary of politicians in the preface. As someone who is rather ignorant when it comes to the political landscape of Singapore, past or present, I worried that much of what followed would go flying over my head.
Those concerns proved largely unfounded. The stories gathered here are deeply personal in nature, and while Holden’s prose is restrained and understated, there is an undercurrent of sadness running throughout the collection that gives it a great deal of emotional weight.
While some readers may find the pacing slow at first glance, there is far more unfolding beneath the surface, albeit in a subtle way.
With thanks to the publisher for the ARC.
I approached this collection with a degree of apprehension, particularly when I was met at the outset with a glossary of politicians in the preface. As someone who is rather ignorant when it comes to the political landscape of Singapore, past or present, I worried that much of what followed would go flying over my head.
Those concerns proved largely unfounded. The stories gathered here are deeply personal in nature, and while Holden’s prose is restrained and understated, there is an undercurrent of sadness running throughout the collection that gives it a great deal of emotional weight.
While some readers may find the pacing slow at first glance, there is far more unfolding beneath the surface, albeit in a subtle way.
With thanks to the publisher for the ARC.
September 21, 2025
A slow start to the stories give way to a little more interesting ones but considering the tales are based in Singapore, I’d expected a bit of political history thrown in and found next to none. I found the stories quite bland and devoid of anything that I could get my teeth into. I did like the way the author writes but not the content. I need a little more excitement in my books these days due to the gloomy nature of the world and this didn’t lift my spirits. However, I want a channel 8 please.
Many thanks to NetGalley and Gaudy Boy publishing for this ARC.
Many thanks to NetGalley and Gaudy Boy publishing for this ARC.
July 9, 2017
My friend lent me this book, which contains some insightful stories, although some of them are 'passive', bland, convoluted in an artificial way, too slow-paced for me. I finished half the book and decided to stop, to read Surrogate Protocol. maybe my taste has changed from literary to something more alluring like a good plot.
May 19, 2021
Interesting read. Quite the gloomy outlook
July 16, 2021
gonna put this one aside for a while
pls hmu w good local fiction 🙏 (pref not short stories)
pls hmu w good local fiction 🙏 (pref not short stories)
November 19, 2025
well-done set of short stories with a unique type of vibe to them. i think in general they're a fine read. 4 stars. tysm for the arc.
March 9, 2026
3/5
Idk i think this guy might be interested in lky
Idk i think this guy might be interested in lky
May 1, 2026
This is a story I would like to re-read once I'm more familiar with Singaporean history and culture. This book forced me to slow down, so it took me over a week to finish.
There were many of these passages that didn't land for me, but there were also many that really spoke to me. "Pigeons and Doves" was the first to grab my attention (at the 50% mark). There were a handful of others I enjoyed as well, but the way I wanted to highlight everything after "Let's call History your therapist" and all the questions it asked?! Loved that one.
I'll revisit this. As it stands, I'm giving this a 3.5 (rounded up).
Thank you to NetGalley and Gaudy Boy for the eARC.
January 28, 2017
After an extremely promising start, fusing politics and the poetry of everyday life, Heaven Has Eyes takes an ill-advised detour into the speculative and magical, then treads and re-treads covered ground. While Holden is undeniably a competent writer, his narrators have a proclivity for over-explaining towards stories' ends, there are way too many overweening similes and the focus on middle-class Chinese Singapore characters – or the insider-outsider characters partnered with them – gets a little tiring.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews