Everyday objects surround us, the unconditional keepers of confessions and secrets.They are with us in those private moments when we think we are alone, perhapsin an abandoned stairwell or an empty lift, as we adjust our clothes, checkourselves in the mirror, scratch an itch or allow ourselves a sigh or a sob.What if those inanimate witnesses to silent thought and hidden emotion hadstories to tell—Of love, betrayal and hope?

    Each activist, artist, architect, etc. is interviewed against the backdrop of his or her bookcase, putting front and centre a life of ideas and imagination.This is a book club for curious minds."We need more naysayers... We need to create new formulas, which you can't until you attack and challenge every sacred cow."–Kishore Mahbubani, former dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public PolicyFeatured: Tan Tarn How, Constance Singam, Tay Kheng Soon, Yeoh Lam Keong, Cherian George, Claire Leow, Remy Choo Zheng Xi, Teo Soh Lung, Thirunalan Sasitharan, Jennifer Teo, Dan Wong, Chua Beng Huat, Kirsten Han, Filzah Sumartono, Alex Au, Martyn See, June Chua, William SW Lim, M. Ravi, Loo Zihan, Vanessa Ho, Mohamed Imran Mohamed Taib, Seelan Palay, Sonny Liew, Margaret Thomas and Thum Ping Tjin.More at http://naysayers.sg/Buy the book at: https://shop.epigrambooks.sg/products...Advance praise: "Right book, right time; read and be inspired by the naysayers in our midst as they battle against the odds."—Ismail Kassim, political journalist and author of No Hard Feelings“The 26 essays are inspiring accounts of the subjects: who they are, what they are, what they do, their exemplary efforts to speak up and their brushes with the law and the authorities in a society constrained by a matrix of repressive laws. Edifying and a must-read, especially for civil society activists.”—Peter Low, human rights lawyer and founder of Peter Low & Choo LLC"In Singapore there is a fine line between co-option by the establishment and ostracism by society. These delightful vignettes are about the brave men and women who tread it—often at great personal cost—expanding our collective imagination in ways the elite never can. Instead of calling for more naysayers, Singapore would do well to listen to those it already has."—Sudhir Thomas Vadaketh, author of Floating on a Malayan Breeze“An inspiring collection of interviews with respected Singapore civil society activists. Not only do we hear how they came to be, why they do what they do, we take a peak into their bookshelves to understand the ideas that galvanised them. A book lover’s book!”—Tan Pin Pin, director of In Time to Come and To Singapore, with Love“Simon captures the other ways of thinking in Singapore with these rich and colourful profiles, revealing to us a Singapore that could have been, or perhaps a Singapore that might someday be. Naysayer's is a book about those who swim against the flow, but it isn’t about tiredness; it’s about hope.”—Daniel Yap, publisher of The Middle Ground"I was not disappointed in the depth and authenticity of the interviews… The chapters on Sonny Liew, the award-winning comic book maestro, and Thum Ping Tjin, the controversial historian who startles with his honest interpretation of history, will be among those I will turn to first."—Clement Mesenas, journalist and author of Dissident Voices and The Last Great Strike

    It is fundamentally about protecting and promoting the country’s interests, preferably by being nice but, if necessary, by other appropriate means.” —Bilahari Kausikan Small states are always vulnerable. It is this sense of vulnerability that keeps Singapore alert. As a small country in Southeast Asia seeking to survive and prosper, Singapore cannot be ordinary. It must be extraordinary. Otherwise, why would anyone want to deal with Singapore rather than with larger countries? Herein lies the central challenge for Singapore in every area, including foreign policy. Singapore is Not An Island: Views on Singapore Foreign Policy is a compilation of essays and public speeches by Bilahari Kausikan over the last 25 years. His is a frank and ispassionate assessment of the geopolitical realities to date, and the uncertainties that have emerged. It is for anyone interested to know about protecting Singapore’s interests, nicely or otherwise, in a rapidly changing and complex world. The book, to be launched on 21 June 2017 by Professor S Jayakumar, will be supported by an aggressive print advertisement campaign in The Straits Times, Business Times and The New Paper from 22 to 30 June 2017. “Bilahari is one of the finest minds in Singapore’s public service. His unvarnished analysis of foreign policy trends is refreshing as are his thoughts on what they portend for Singapore. This collection should interest anyone who seeks an insight to Singapore’s foreign policy.” —Prof S Jayakumar, Former Senior Minister (2009-2011), Deputy Prime Minister (2004–2009) and Minister for Foreign Affairs (1994–2004), Singapore About the Author | Bilahari P S Kausikan is a veteran Singapore diplomat who retired in 2013, after serving in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) for 32 years. He was Second Permanent Secretary and subsequently Permanent Secretary of MFA from 2001 to 2013. He is now Ambassador-at-Large. Bilahari is known nationally and internationally for his strategic analyses, and has a following in international foreign policy circles. He has also established a reputation in social media circles, especially among young Singaporeans. About the Editor | Tan Lian Choo joined The Straits Times in 1973 and later reported extensively on Southeast Asia. Winner of the Asia Press Foundation Mitsubishi Asian Journalist of the Year 1984, she was conferred the 1990 Asean Award for Communication for her outstanding achievements and contributions to journalism. In 1995, she joined MFA, serving as the ministry’s first Director of Public Affairs, Spokesperson for the Ministry and Press Secretary to the Foreign Minister. Her latter overseas diplomatic assignments included being Singapore’s Permanent Delegate to UNESCO in Paris (2007–2009) and Head of Mission, Singapore Embassy in Brasilia, Brazil (2012–2015). She retired from the Singapore Foreign Service in 2015.

    The book maps his trajectory through India, China, Pakistan, to Egypt and Morocco, during the year of his wandering between his native Singapore and his new home in Berowra. His essays offer memorable portraits of his parents and grandparents, friends and teachers, barbers and backpackers, the handicapped and the poor. Boey is a poet and he brings poetic sensibility to make this writing of the most powerful kind.

    Attempting to come to terms with it, he creates the Soundloft, a device that turns dreams into music. Helping him out are three of his best friends - Cantona, a promising Bangladeshi artist on the run from a construction company; Tights, a Chinese illegal immigrant with a pop culture fascination; and Shanti, a gifted lab technician hiding from her abusive husband. But when a powerful metaphysical entity begins haunting them, looking to find her way in the world of the living, he and his friends find themselves embroiled in a supernatural showdown that will result in either cartharsis, or the end of the world.

    Prefacing these stories are contributions from 5 local commentators who share their personal reflections on the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities in Singapore. They are: Mrs Juliana Toh, Executive Director of Counselling and Care Centre; Reverend Yap Kim Hao, former Methodist Bishop of Singapore; transgender activist Ms Leona Lo; and former Nominated Members of Parliament Ms Braema Mathi and Mr Siew Kum Hong. The book also contains a glossary of the common terms used to describe the diversity within the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities, and a listing of relevant community and professional resources in Singapore. The editor’s proceeds from sales of the ebook will be donated to Oogachaga, a counselling and support service.

    Discover the Lion City through the eyes of its cats and their humans in From the Belly of the Cat, an anthology of fifteen feline tales by some of the city-state’s most exciting writers and notorious cat sympathisers.For best results, read this book at home on the sofa on a rainy afternoon, with a cup of warm tea within reach, and a cat by your side.

    This volume takes as its subject the troubled sleep of late modernity, from the grandeur and failure of megacities to the retreats and displacements of the suburbs. The power of crowds and architecture commingles with the alienation and idleness of the observer, caught between “the brutal red dream/Of the collective” and “the parade/Of the ideal citizen.” The book’s action takes place in these gaps, “dead spaces beside the endlessly grieving stream.” The frozen tableau of the spectacle meets its double in the sense that something is always about to happen. Political furies and erotic imaginings coalesce and escape within a welter of unmoored allusions, encounters, citations, and histories, the dreams possible within the modern’s excess of signification—as if to return revolutionary possibility to the regime of information by singing it its own song.

    His language, that of love in its purest form, speaks to us today as it did seven hundred years ago, surpassing time and bridging cultures.These poems, most of them translated into English for the first time from the original Persian, were carefully selected from two thousand of Rumi's quatrains. Arranged thematically, they take us on a journey of the soul. Persian calligraphy enhances the beauty of the poems.Discover the depths of a mystic's soul. Fly with him on his beloved's wings. Fall with him into the despair and fear of losing his beloved forever. Discover the beauty and love contained in this wonderful little book of poetry.

    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.

    A shockingly assured first collection from young poet Jesse Ball, its elegant lines and penetrating voice present a poetic symphony instead of a simple succession of individual, barely-linked poems. Craftsmanship defines this collection; it is full of perfect line-breaks, tenderly selected words, and inventive pairings. Just as impressive is the breadth and ingenuity of its recurring themes, which crescendo as Ball leads us through his fantastic world, quietly opening doors.In five separate sections we meet beekeepers and parsons, a young woman named Anna in a thin, linen dress and an old scribe transferring the eponymous March Book. We witness a Willy Loman-esque worker who "ran out in the noon street / shirt sleeves rolled, and hurried after / that which might have passed" only to be told that there's nothing between him and "the suddenness of age." While these images achingly inform us of our delicate place in the physical world, others remind us why we still yearn to awake in it every day and "make pillows with the down / of stolen geese," "build / rooms in terms of the hours of the day." Like a patient Virgil, insistent and confident, Ball escorts us through his mind, and we're lucky to follow.

    It appears to be suicide, by a cocktail of morphine, alcohol and Valium. But upon investigation by a CID inspector, who might not be what he seems, the family discover there may be far more sinister circumstances behind his death, reaching the uppermost echelons of government. Death of a Perm Sec exposes the dark heart of power politics, from the country’s tumultuous post-independence days to the socio-political landscape of the 1980s.

    . . But among the many writers who have come of age in our fin de siècle, none have succeeded more completely as poet, critic, and translator than Robert Pinsky." --James Longenbach, The NationThe poems in Robert Pinsky's At the Foundling Hospital consider personality and culture as improvised from loss: a creative effort so pervasive it is invisible. An extreme example is the abandoned newborn. At the Foundling Hospital of eighteenth-century London, in a benign and oddly bureaucratic process, each new infant was identified by a duly recorded token. A minimal, charged particle of meaning, the token might be a coin or brooch or thimble--or sometimes a poem, such as the one quoted in full in Pinsky's poem "The Foundling Tokens." A foundling may inherit less of a past than an orphan, but with a wider set of meanings. The foundling soul needs to be adopted, and it needs to be adaptive.In one poem, French and German appear as originally Creole tongues, invented by the rough needs of conquered peoples and their Roman masters. In another, creators from scorned or excluded groups--among them Irving Berlin, Quintus Horatius Flaccus, and W.E.B. Du Bois--speak, as does the Greek tragic chorus, in the first-person singular.In these poems, a sometimes desperate, perpetual reimagining of identity, on the scale of one life or of human history, is deeply related to music: The quest is lyrical, whether the subject is as specific as "the emanation of a dead star still alive" or as personal as the "pinhole iris of your mortal eye."

    It draws upon his influential collection Singapore: The Air-Conditioned Nation (2000), on the country's politics of comfort and control, and from Singapore, Incomplete (2017), on its underdeveloped democracy. Updated for the impending transition to a new generation of leaders, this 20th anniversary edition of Air-Conditioned Nation offers critical reflections on continuity and change in Singapore’s unique political culture.

    Hailed as “an essential book for those seeking self-love,” this heartfelt anthology lends voice to the heartbreak and healing of our soul’s quest to reunite with whom we always hoped we could be—ourselves.