In the electrifying months leading up to the watershed 2011 General Elections and in the tumultuous months after, playwright Alfian Sa’at interviewed Singaporeans to discover their responses to the elections.Covering a wide social and political spectrum, the candid interviews capture the GE experience through the voices of individual Singaporeans — from election candidates to pro-establishment civil servants; from taxi-drivers to teachers; from diehard opposition supporters to young people casting their virgin votes.These interviews — some hopeful, some fearful, some hilariously frank, some achingly honest — form a portrait of Singaporeans confronting the real meaning of democracy and rediscovering their role in shaping the country’s future.

    This is the man who picks his nose on the bus, who will fight for his country and fight you to do it his way. He will shout you into submission while astounding you with his tenderness towards his wife. His standard answer to all you questions is "nothing." Singaporean to the core, this volume of short stories narrated in a mixture of colloquial Singlish and standard English reinvents classic prose forms from the ghost story to the university admissions essay through the figure of Uncle.

    Travelling to the past, parallel planets, and the future, it tells a story of stories that explores the universal themes of love and loss, time and transience, and travel and wanderlust.Enchanting and evocative, the tales of Agnes Chew transport you to places that run on lost time, missed opportunities, and deep-rooted aspirations. These are voyages fuelled by a sense of nostalgia, possibility, and hope. Ultimately, this debut collection raises fundamental questions on the ways in which we live our lives.

    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

    Jennani Durai is an exciting new voice in literature, a writer to watch!” –Tayari Jones, multi-award-winning author of An American MarriageA teenager discovers his grandfather's secret identity only after his death. A young immigrant to 1940s Singapore is convinced the end-times are nigh. A man is tasked with bringing the corpse of his estranged brother home from Phuket. A reporter is torn between doing her a job and respecting her friend’s privacy.From obituaries and job ads to crime reports and horoscopes, Regrettable Things That Happened Yesterday is a collection of ten short stories connected by the motif of newspapers, and the unexpected ways they end up affecting our lives.

    Years later, a Malaysian journalist returns to her homeland to uncover the truth of a massacre committed during the Emergency. And in Singapore, Siew Li's niece Stella finds herself accused of being a Marxist conspirator.Jeremy Tiang's debut novel dives into the tumultuous days of leftist movements and political detentions in Singapore and Malaysia. It follows an extended family from the 1940s to the present day as they navigate the choppy political currents of the region. What happens when the things that divide us also bind us together?

    I do what is necessary to get what I want.”Born on the night of the nation’s independence, Gimme Lao is cheated of the honour of being Singapore’s firstborn son by a vindictive nurse. This forms the first of three things Gimme never knows about himself, the second being the circumstances surrounding his parents’ marriage, and the third being the profound (but often unintentional) impact he has on other people’s lives.Talented, determined and focused, young Gimme is confident he can sail the seven seas, but he does not anticipate his vessel would have to carry his mother’s ambition, his wife’s guilt and his son’s secret. Tracing social, economic and political issues over the past 50 years, this humorous novel uses Gimme as a hapless centre to expose all of Singapore’s ambitions, dirty linen and secret moments of tender humanity.

    Yet we tend to associate sustainability, nature, and the environment with distant places, science, and policy. The truth is that everything is environmental, from transportation to taxes, work to love, cities to cuisine.This book is the first to examine contemporary Singapore from an ecocultural lens, looking at the ways that Singaporean life and culture is deeply entangled with the nonhuman lives that flourish all around us. The authors represent a new generation of cultural critics and environmental thinkers, who will inherit the future we are creating today. From chilli crab to Tiger Beer, Changi Airport to Pulau Semakau, O-levels to orang minyak films, these essays offer fresh perspectives on familiar subjects, prompting us to recognise the incredible urgency of climate change and the need to transform our ways of thinking, acting, learning, living, and governing so as to maintain a stable planet and a decent future.

    Rehash national icons: the truth about racial riot fodder-girl Maria Hertogh living out her days as a chambermaid in Lake Tahoe, a mirage of the Merlion as a ladyboy working Orchard Towers, and a high-stakes fantasy starring the still-suave lead of the 1990s TV hit serial The Unbeatables.Heartfelt and sexy, the stories of Amanda Lee Koe encompass a skewed world fraught with prestige anxiety, moral relativism, sexual frankness, and the improbable necessity of human connection. Told in strikingly original prose, these are fictions that plough, relentlessly, the possibilities of understanding Singapore and her denizens discursively, off-centre. Ministry of Moral Panic is an extraordinary debut collection and the introduction of a revelatory new voice.

    Throughout are interwoven the themes of memory, loss, language, identity and cultural reclamation.Similarly, it is a reflective and provocative journey of self-discovery; a journey the reader may also take to explore what it means to exist at the confluence of being Singaporean and being Eurasian, and to interrogate the liminal space between two cultures, Asian and European, occupied by this community.

    A band of swordsmen on a failed mission. The forbidden love of Zheng He, the great Chinese Admiral. A young daughter forming a strange bond with her deceased father’s cat. Presenting ten stories in his fifth collection, O Thiam Chin plumbs the joy and despair, hopes and fears of men and women caught up by their past and confounded by lost loves. Taut, dark and visceral, these stories reveal, once again, the mysteries that lie in the heart of man.

    The story takes place between 1961 and 1994, backdropped by a fast-globalising Singapore where stigmatisation of persons afflicted with mental illness nevertheless remains deep-seated. Unflinchingly raw and honest in its portrayal of living with schizophrenia, The Sound of Sch is a moving account of human resiliency and sacrifice in the face of brokenness.

    What is the right way to handle an abusive partner? An unexpected pregnancy? A toxic friendship? Chronic unemployment? A family member going to war? A disability? Anger? Loneliness?  Finding themselves in disempowering, frightening, or otherwise unendurable circumstances, the girls and women in Maria Adelmann's stories look for ways to free themselves into new lives or, at the very least, new states of feeling. Sometimes they do this by hurting someone else or getting hurt; sometimes by submitting, other times by mounting a rebellion. With a special talent for pressing the sharp up against the tender, Adelmann explores the many pathways through the titular condition. Ranging in style from the magical to the terrifying to the calm tones of a self-help manual, GIRLS OF A CERTAIN AGE captures the spectrum of strategies we apply to the pain of life, strategies that we persist in pretending might actually work.

    government spies can turn on your phone and use the microphone to listen to your conversations? ... that lesbian and gay relationships are illegal in 78 countries and can be punished by death? ... that Amnesty recently recorded the highest number of executions globally for more than 25 years? Through short stories and poetry, twenty-five leading authors and illustrators explore the top human rights issues facing young people today. Now is the time to take a stand and make a difference. Full list of contributors: Tony Birch, John Boyne, Sita Brahmachari, Kevin Brooks, Kate Charlesworth, Sarah Crossan, Neil Gaiman, Jack Gantos, Ryan Gattis, Matt Haig, Frances Hardinge, Jackie Kay, AL Kennedy, Liz Kessler, Elizabeth Laird, Amy Leon, Sabrina Mahfouz, Chelsea Manning, Chibundu Onuzo, Bali Rai, Chris Riddell, Mary and Bryan Talbot, Christie Watson and Tim Wynne-Jones.

    His life consists of reading, working and visiting his parents' house to rearrange his piles of "collectibles". He has only one friend, another teacher who has managed to force Sukhin into a friendship by sheer doggedness.While on an errand one afternoon in Chinatown, he encounters a homeless person who recognises him. This chance reunion turns Sukhin's well-planned life upside down, and the pair learns about love and sacrifice over their shared fondness for cake.