Lee Jaylin, a 31-year-old workaholic Advertising Executive, wonders just what the point of it all is when her long-time friend and lover departs to travel the world, leaving her with the less than exhilarating task of promoting ‘designer condoms’. With penetration, humour and roller-coaster momentum, Ovidia Yu subtly weaves an intricate web of hidden relationships with a highly comic series of events, in the process questioning the most cherished assumptions of Singapore’s high-pressure, breakneck-paced lifestyle. Is this really the rat race? Or just a long and lonely mouse marathon?

This title is being reissued under the new Marshall Cavendish Classics: Literary Fiction series, which seeks to introduce some of the best works of Singapore literature to a new generation of readers. Some have been evergreen titles over the years, others have been unjustly neglected.