The author grew up in the then Malaya which had been under British control as a crown colony since 1867 before it gained its independence in 1957.

This memoir covers the most formative stage of the author’s life up to 1957 when he was seventeen. It gives a rare insight into the period of British colonial rule, his parents and their profound influences on him growing up in a strict traditional family steeped in Confucian values, their struggle with poverty, his quest for meaning as an adolescent, the sociology of Klang, his birthplace, his school-days and his teachers, his musical awakening and his humanism.

' My life would never have been the same had I not switched from a Chinese to an English-medium school when I was seven’.

A precocious child, he was soon attracted to English poetry and began writing poems for the annual school magazine when he was twelve. He wrote in the Preface to his anthology The Heart Has Its Reasons (Poems of Love and Life): A Personal Perspective: 'It was the start of my journey into the greatest joy of my life which coincided with my passionate love of Western classical music'.

Lim received his PhD (avec la mention bien) from the Institute of Social Studies, Catholic University of Paris, in 1974. He lives with his wife of 53 years in Melbourne. They have two grown-up sons and a young grandson.

Lim is a self-taught composer and violinist and, in his spare time, performs for charities.