Singapore reaps literary dividend from migrant culture

Of the 30 people who share MD Sharif Uddin's workers' barracks in Singapore, only a handful know that he writes. Uddin, who owned a bookshop in Bangladesh, moved to Singapore in 2008 to join the many thousands of his countrymen who come to the city-state to work in the construction sector -- paying $10,000 to an agent for the privilege.

But then, his memoir of a decade on building sites and in barrack rooms, "Stranger To Myself," recently won the non-fiction category in the Singapore Book Awards. It is a chronicle of the strange duality of the life of a migrant construction worker, building the city's skyscrapers and train lines without ever being considered a part of its social fabric.