Big Mole
Ming Cher
Singapore: Epigram Books, 2015
ISBN: 9789814655354

In the fight for independence, one girl seeks freedom for herself. Born an orphan with an unlucky blemish under her eye, Big Mole is stuck running a fish shop with her roguish boyfriend Hong. When their friend is killed in cold blood on his first day as a secret society gangster, Hong forms a band of brothers and swears ruthless revenge. Big Mole finds herself reeled into a brutal mass murder and tumultuous opposition politics, with the colonial police and local investigators hot on their heels.

This thrilling sequel to the seminal Spider Boys marks Ming Cher's long-awaited return after two decades. Crackling with the seedy spirit of 1950s Singapore, rife with possibilities, Big Mole will transport and invigorate you as, with the tenacity of an exotic fighting fish, one blemish turns to beauty spot.

It Never Rains on National Day: Stories
Jeremy Tiang
Singapore: Epigram Books, 2015
ISBN: 9789814655644

A woman fleeing her previous existence meets a fellow Singaporean on an overnight train in Norway. A foreign worker is decapitated in an HDB building site accident. A Singaporean wife must negotiate Beijing as her British husband awaits a heart transplant. And in different corners of the world, Singaporeans and exiles mark National Day in their own ways.

Jeremy Tiang's debut collection weaves together the lives of its characters across the world—from Switzerland, Norway, Germany, China, Canada, Thailand, New York City and back to Singapore. These wry, unsettling stories ask how we decide where we belong, and what happens to those who don't.

When a Flower Dies
Josephine Chia
Singapore: Ethos Books, 2015
ISBN: 9789810963149

What can we recover after a life passes on? A novel about love, forgetting and remembering. Pansy Lim, a Peranakan girl, was brought up in a seaside village in colonial Singapore in the 1940s. She inherits her mother's love for flowers, nature, the sea, and their healing qualities. Educated by English nuns, she learns and grows to love English, literature and poetry. We see her at the start of the novel, aged, forgetful, and desperately clinging to memories of her recently deceased husband. Through her recollections, she remembers George Chan, the village life that they shared, and the communal past left behind by a nation always on the move.

Cherry Days
David Leo
Singapore: Ethos Books, 2015
ISBN: 9789810964870

A coming-of-age story set in 1950s Singapore, written with photorealistic clarity. Skinny and his friends grow up in a self-sufficient kampong along an unnamed road. Reading about their lives, a distinctive character of their long-gone childhood and of Singapore emerges -- raw from a recently concluded war, alive with student riots and social movements.

Among the themes explored by the narrator is one of change, such as the transition from rural to urban living and the role of women in a developing society, as if inevitably the road must lead to it. Stories of love, death and forgiveness line the unnamed road at the heart of life in the kampong.

Singathology: 50 New Works by Singapore's Award-Winning Writers
Gwee Li Sui (ed.)
Singapore: Marshall Cavendish International, 2015
ISBN: 9789814561402

Singathology: 50 New Works by Singapore's Award-winning Writers is a stunning collection of original Singapore literature. The first of its kind, this two-volume anthology 50 comprises specially commissioned new works from past winners of the prestigious Cultural Medallion or Young Artist Award.

Conceived as a celebration of Singapore literature to launch on the year of the nation's jubilee, this anthology illustrates the richness and diversity of the island nation's creative spirit.

Traversing generations and genres, readers will encounter poetry, prose, comics and plays. Pieces written in mother tongue languages of Chinese, Tamil and Malay will be included in their original form, but will be accompanied by their English translations. These translations will ensure that, uniquely, many important literary voices will be heard in English for the first time.

The Epigram Books Collection of Best New Singaporean Short Stories: Volume Two
Jason Erik Lundberg (ed.)
Singapore: Epigram Books, 2015
ISBN: 9789814615921

Singaporean literature has begun experiencing a sea change, with the short story form enjoying a renaissance. As a result, an explosion of short fiction with a Singaporean flavour has been produced to incredible effect, both by emerging and established writers. For the prose enthusiast, it is a very exciting time.

The Epigram Books Collection of Best New Singaporean Short Stories: Volume Two curates the finest short fiction from Singaporean writers published in 2013 and 2014. This ground-breaking and unique anthology showcases stories that examine various facets of the human condition and the truths that we tell ourselves in order to exist in the everyday. The styles are as varied as the authors, and no two pieces are alike. Here are twenty unique and breathtaking literary insights into the Singaporean psyche, which examine what it means to live in this particular part of the world at this particular time.

A White Rose at Midnight: A Play
Lim Chor Pee
Singapore: Epigram Books, 2015
ISBN: 9789814615488

On the cusp of independence, cultures collide in a bedroom in Singapore. As the Vietnam War rages on, the English-educated scholar Lee Hua Min -- "the finest product of the University" -- finds himself hopelessly disillusioned. Enter Wong Ching Mei, a Chinese-educated former nightclub singer seeking to enrol in Nanyang University. Mirroring the intense tussles between the English- and Chinese-speaking during Singapore's formative years, Hua Min and Ching Mei trade ferocious barbs even as they are inexplicably drawn to each other. When Su-Ling, Hua Min's ex-classmate, returns from London, Hua Min is torn between their advances and the extremely different worlds they inhabit. Humorous, witty and prescient, A White Rose At Midnight is a pithy portrait of a soul -- and nation -- divided.

A White Rose At Midnight was first staged to critical acclaim by the Experimental Theatre Club in 1964. It was pioneer playwright Lim Chor Pee's second and final play after the landmark Mimi Fan (1962). In 2014, Centre 42 mounted a partial dramatised reading of the play.

The Widower
Mohamed Latiff Mohamed
Singapore: Epigram Books, 2015
ISBN: 9789814615129

Former political detainee and professor Pak Karman loses his wife in a car accident. The intensity of his mourning causes him to become untethered from his sanity. As reality, memory and fantasy become more and more blurred, he must come to terms with his past actions before his grief overwhelms him completely. Mohamed Latiff Mohamed's novel, hailed as a landmark in modernist Malay fiction, is an unsettling tale of psychic disintegration and obsessive love.

Corridor: 12 Short Stories
Alfian Sa'at
Singapore: Ethos Books, 2015
ISBN: 9789810779931

Corridor is a collection of short stories all set in present‐day Singapore. With unsentimental clarity and heartbreaking honesty, Alfian Sa'at writes about HDB dwellers -- students, housewives and factory workers, whose lives begin to unravel once they discover that happiness is a fragile thing in a country obsessed with progress and success.

The characters in each story find themselves in situations that offer them a ticket to hope and change: A video camera transforms the way a resentful daughter sees her widowed mother. A married couple receives free holiday tickets just when their luck seems to have run out. A girl encounters a transvestite on an MRT train ride who tells her that she looks like a famous singer. And a man enters a discotheque after a bitter divorce and re‐learns the terror of falling in love all over again.

Rich in authentic detail, with a sensitive ear for the vernacular, Corridor paints an elegiac, revealing portrait of contemporary Singaporeans who exist along the city's corridors -- haunted by lost loves, irrevocable childhoods and a deep longing to be free.

Corridor won the Singapore Literature Prize Commendation Award in 1998.

Tall Tales and MisAdventures of a Young Westernized Oriental Gentleman
Goh Poh Seng
Singapore: NUS Press, 2015
ISBN: 9789971696344

This book of short stories by Goh Poh Seng tells his adventures as a young Asian student in the Ireland of the 1950s. Brought up in post-war Kuala Lumpur, the impressionable young man finds himself transported to a totally different milieu and culture. The stories follow him from the first tentative steps of his voyage to Europe, to his sojourn in a hostel for Asian students and the shock of boarding life in a boys' Catholic school; continues with his early awakening to the possibility of becoming a writer, together with a total embrace of the cultural and literary pleasures of Dublin. Along the way, he met a colourful tapestry of characters, among them a member of the Anglo-Irish gentry, the suave and charming Tom Pierre from the West Indies, and the much-loved Irish poet Paddy Kavanagh.

One Fierce Hour
Alfian Sa'at
Singapore: Landmark Books, 2014
ISBN: 9789814189552

One Fierce Hour is Alfian Sa'at's first and breakout work. It was hailed as 'truly a landmark' for Singaporean poetry when it was published in 1998. The collection, which has entered the canon of Singapore literature, contains the anti-anthem "Singapore You Are Not My Country". Alfian remains an intelligent writer with an unabashedly social and political voice. He has written 37 plays, 3 works of prose and 2 poetry anthologies.

A Luxury We Cannot Afford: An Anthology of Singapore Poetry
Christine Chia & Joshua Ip (eds.)
Singapore: Math Paper Press, 2014
ISBN: 9789810926533

Singapore is a country of many invented, transplanted, or self-made myths and fables, but one looms above them all. 1969 marks the famous declaration of the myth: "Poetry is a luxury we cannot afford."

As our island nation approaches its 50th anniversary wielding extraordinary wealth and prosperity, it is timely to review the narrative that has shepherded us through the past half-century. Indeed, it seems only poetic justice to examine this polarising mythos through the ballyhooed medium of poetry. To praise and appraise this most poetic of figures, 56 of Singapore's finest poets offer up 65 poems that promise to excite, exhilarate, and electrify, to a man.

SingPoWriMo: The Anthology
Ann Ang, Joshua Ip, & Pooja Nansi (eds.)
Singapore: Math Paper Press, 2014
ISBN: 9789810926526

Singapore Poetry Writing Month, or as we affectionately call it, SingPoWriMo.

Write one poem a day for thirty days in the cruel month of April: that was the challenge thrown open to the wilderness of the interwebz. This anthology brings together the best of the hundreds of poems that were submitted, from verses written in response to fiendish "include-all-these-six-words-in-your-poem" challenges, to impromptu poems written on whim. In the spirit of the democratic process of poetry, we feature first-time poets beside established ones, and blackout poems besides long-forgotten forms such as the liwuli.

Ten Things My Father Never Taught Me and Other Stories
Cyril Wong
Singapore: Epigram Books, 2014
ISBN: 9789814615082

A woman learns of a friend's illness and wonders if she ever truly knew him. A boy who sees ghosts heeds the advice of a fortune-teller, with surprising consequences. A girl wakes up and realises everybody in her Bedok neighbourhood has vanished. This collection brings together, for the first time, both new and previously published stories by Cyril Wong, the award-winning author of The Last Lesson of Mrs de Souza. Ranging from the commonplace to the surreal, these short narratives feature characters in crisis, with two stories crossing intriguingly into creative autobiography.

Coastlands
Aaron Lee Soon Yong
Singapore: Ethos Books, 2014
ISBN: 9789810924782

Coastlands is Aaron Lee's third collection of poetry. Whether in a small town or frenetic city, the poet has never lived far from the sea. This book documents his life experience as a pilgrim still finding his place in the wider world. In these fifty poems he recollects, explores, embraces and anticipates what is lost and found in each of the places he calls home: Malaysia, Singapore and Hawaii. Everywhere, natural and urban landscapes anchor and influence his identity and connect him to humanity.

In ancient writings "coastlands" means the far reaches of the earth -- places accessible only by crossing oceans of unknown magnitude. Truly, life is a voyage from which the traveller never returns.

Play Things: The Complete Works: 1984-2014
Michael Chiang
Singapore: Really Good Books, 2014
ISBN: 9789810920357

The publication of this anthology of Michael Chiang's complete works is a timely clarification that invites the public to 'read' his works as an oeuvre -- in totality and as units to a larger artistic score. For the first time, all his plays, shorts and full-lengths, are collected in one volume that includes updates and additional scenes previously unpublished.

Changes and Chances
Leonard Ng
Singapore: Ethos Books, 2014
ISBN: 9789810925123

Uncompromising yet accessible, the six sequences in Changes and Chances explore love, sorrow, time, nature, and humanity. By turns passionate, hermetic, and heartbreaking, they simultaneously endure and celebrate all the imperfections of the world. Leonard Ng blends free verse with adaptations of both Western and Asian forms to create a musical poetry grounded in the traditions of both East and West.

Saga Seeds
Patricia Maria de Souza
Singapore: Ethos Books, 2014
ISBN: 9789810794828

Saga Seeds is Patricia Maria Tan's latest poetry collection. The title of her book refers most aptly to her poems, taut red beads of memory and observation. Nostalgic references such as masak masak transport readers to a time when children played five stones and games involving pure imagination. The personal recollections serve as a tribute to Singapore and our collective memories. We also find poems alive with the beauty of simple folk and nature, and poems awake to darker moods and events. Throughout the lyrical excursion, readers are borne by the poet's steady and reassuring voice, into the intricacies of introspection, and towards a fuller appreciation of the exquisiteness of everyday moments.

Sound of Mind: A Teacher-Writers Anthology of Poems and Prompts
Philip McConnell and Genevieve Wong (eds.)
Singapore: Ethos Books, 2014
ISBN: 9789810922719

This is an exciting offering of poems from a constellation of teacher-writers, including published and familiar authors such as Ann Ang, Ken Mizusawa, Eric Tinsay Valles, Christine Chia, Heng Siok Tian, David Leo and Oliver Seet.

What makes this anthology worth the reader's precious time is more than the poets' acuity of perception, and their particularities of style; being educators, they have contributed with a view to inspiring the reader's imagination. The poems have been arranged in a manner to stimulate the creative writer in each and every reader.

Tales From the ECP: A Collection of Short Stories
Russ Soh
Singapore: Ethos Books, 2014
ISBN: 9789810922702

Acronyms are peculiarly Singaporean -- short forms created to deliver information with optimal efficiency. An acronym very familiar to Singaporeans is ECP. Extending about 20 kilometres or so, the East Coast Parkway is a vital transport channel, running parallel to another ECP for a large part of its length. It is this other ECP that Tales From The ECP celebrates. Featuring incidents set in or around the East Coast Park, the stories take us into the heart of Singaporean-ness.

East Coast Park is the unsung hero in the ten short stories in this collection. As a meeting point, it brings together people of different age, race, class and nationality. Chance encounters lead to consequences that are frequently comic, sometimes unexpected, variously touching and heartwarming. As a point of conversation, the ECP and its surrounds allow characters to reflect deeply on their sense of self, their identity, and their relationships with others who share the same space.