Where did the idea for your book come from? All Val's Men

All Val's Men is a multi-protagonist medical satire novel that has a doctor working in a fictitious university hospital as a knee specialist being the main character. 

This deeply sceptical main character started in a seemingly ordinary world, a sacrificing wife who is deeply committed to the family, a 20 year old son that joined his rival in an internship, another 16 year old son who is constantly asking for money, and a highly-motivated daughter who is a medical student. When the doctor's rival and his family moved into the main character's community, it triggered a series of events which turned his world, and every family member's world upside down. 

By the time that I've written this book, I would have served as a physician for twenty-five years and a medical scientist for close to seventeen years. I feel very strongly about medical research, and the flaws in modern medical services that plaque us. Inspired by medical fiction such as those by Samuel Shem, and stories of infidelity and destruction such as Disgrace by JM Coetzee and On Beauty by Zadie Smith. These stories are about human relationships gone wrong, man-wife, professor-student, etc. What is unique is that I have made the main character dedicated to his Art, fighting against an institution against which that he cannot possibly win. Ultimately, I ask the question: is there redemption for those who have made the wrong choice?

What are some of the contemporary issues that inspire this book? At the time that this is written, the Singapore press is full of a story of a university student who had been found to take up-skirt photographs of another student when she was showering. Initially, the public found the punishment meted out to the student too mild, which triggered a protest on social media. At the same time, I've found a news article about two professors from a well-known research center in the US to have been sacked despite outstanding research achievements. In my own country and elsewhere, scientists in basic research have been forced to forge industrial collaborations in order to preserve their positions in their institutes. Medical practitioners have been manipulated by insurance companies to lower their charges or they wouldn't be able to join their physician panels. These and other issues form the backdrop to my novel. 

Although the story is basically about a family's struggle, their paths are that of everyday men. It is not unusual for a wife to experience betrayal, an overly ambitious medical student to become disappointed with her 'model' father, a young man to turn to religion after a love affair, an even younger man to be overzealous in reaching out to peers and falling on the wrong side of the law. Ultimately these themes converge because we cannot separate our fates from loved ones. There is no such thing as compartmentalising our careers from the family.