Rice Bowl by Suchen Christine Lim is a novel about the complexity of living in Singapore during the 1970s. Though the book is a fictional account of the protagonists' lives, I find many relations to the 1987's Operation Spectrum.

Operation Spectrum was launched on May 21, 1987 by Singapore's Internal Security Department (ISD) using its Internal Security Act (ISA). A second wave of arrests took place on Jun 20 in the same year. The security operation saw 22 young Catholics, social activists and professionals detained, without trial, under the internal security law, and accused of being members of a dangerous Marxist conspiracy bent on subverting the PAP-ruled government by force, and replacing it with a Marxist state.

This novel traces the events from the view of a Catholic nun, a priest, students and professors from the university. How their innocent involvement with helping the migrant workers landed them in politics.