Stranger To My World

153,000 foreign construction workers - 47% - were infected by COVID-19 in Singapore. MD Sharif Uddin gives voice to their experience through his personal diary of 2020 which records honest details of the anxieties, uncertainties, frustrations – and longings – faced by himself and his migrant brothers. Dormitory life, hospitalisation, quarantine in community care facilities and the aid rendered by kind Singaporeans give searing insight into the sacrifices of those who helped to build Singapore, their Dream City. Sharif's sense of sacrifice and devotion to others… is also the lens through which he sees the world…. It is the very basis of what he has done in (his) books, which is to welcome us into his world – hardly an easy one – with the conviction that his writing will be a source of comfort and change. If you are holding this book, that welcome is extended to you too, with all the possibility it brings. So read on, then. Don't be a stranger.