My Book of the Year 2020

For SP Blog’s 7th Annual Books Round-up, 41 Singaporean writers, artists, and thinkers, living in Singapore and abroad, give their favorite read of the year. The book does not have to be written by a Singaporean, but if it isn’t, contributors could recommend a second title that is by a Singaporean. What is striking in this year’s recommendations is the variety of presses publishing Singaporean works. Joining local publishing stalwarts Epigram Books, Ethos Books, and Math Paper Press are new presses started by active civil-society groups such as Migrant Workers of Singapore and Academia SG. Indie presses specializing in certain genres—Bold Ideas Studio, Temporary Press, Simply Green—appear in this round-up for the first time. Landmark Books and Firstfruits Publications return to the literary scene with innovative offerings. An international dimension continues to be provided by Penguin Southeast Asia based in Singapore, while the National University of Singapore Press releases important works of memoir and biography about key intellectuals and culture workers in the country’s history. We may well be seeing a publishing renaissance in Singapore that challenges the shibboleths of pandemic publishing. Big thanks to all our contributors who wrote so passionately about their recommendations. We hope you enjoy reading all the contributions as much as we’ve enjoyed compiling them. Please support independent publishers and booksellers by ordering from them directly. If you like what we do, please consider making a donation here.


Angus Whitehead, literary critic and educator. My book choice for 2020 is No Cinderella: Poems of a Filipina Domestic Worker, by Rolinda Onates Española, the first collection of poems published by a female migrant worker in Singapore as well as the first solely poetry collection published by any migrant worker which is not textually interfered with, bookended, last worded or Singasplained, letting the writer speak for herself without patrician interruption. With almost 100 poems it is almost as generous as Rolinda is—it is a delight, a dream come true. And despite being turned down by supposedly major Singapore publishers, shame on their pretentious and impertinent heads, this first publication by Migrant Writers of Singapore, a migrant lens on Singapore, is already changing Singaporeans for the better—as we still await legal judgements on the deaths of Arlyn Nucos and Abigail Danao Leste, and history’s assessment of Singapore’s care of migrant workers during the early COVID period in Singapore. As things seemed to further narrow globally and locally, two books opened my flowering mind this dark 2020. Ali Smith’s final novel in her four-novel series, Summer (UK: Hamish Hamilton, 2020), which among other things also celebrates and empowers the beleaguered migrant female in the face of concrete, governmental-shaped unthinking. Of all the texts in my British lit course just finished, only Ali Smith’s writing had us gushing collectively with possibilities after the bell, despite previous history/linguistic/sexuality/monolith/mum mis-education.

Anthony Koh Waugh, bookseller and writer. This year, Musings on the Moon (Bold Ideas Studio, 2020) by debut author Flo-Jo won my heart. I was attracted by the space cat on the cover. Of course I’m a cat lover. My bias aside, this rhyming picture book is more than just the cutesy feline illustrations. It reminded me of picture books like I am Henry Finch, The Little Black Fish and The Fox on the Swing which introduce the power of thought and noticing to both children and adults. Rich in poetic writing and detailed ink drawings by Rex Lee (whose project was featured on BBC), this book is a rare quality production among independently published works.

Caleb Goh, theater director and educator. Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu (USA: Pantheon Books, 2020). Willis Wu is the protagonist of this book. He is an aspiring actor on a crime procedural, relegated to roles such as Generic Asian Man, Background Oriental, or Disgraced Son. He dreams that one day he can ascend the ranks and take on the pinnacle of roles for Asians—Kung Fu Guy. Then one day, when he unwittingly stumbles into the spotlight and finds himself in a role more major than he could imagine, he begins to discover the secrets of his own identity, his past, his family, and where his future lies in today's America. What I loved about this book was how it unapologetically leaned into current and past Hollywood tropes and Asian stereotypes, while weaving the problematic portrayals into a larger conversation that still prevails today. From acceptance to assimilation and immigration, this book unearths the alarming "othering" and outsider status that Asians still hold today in America. Reading this book made me inspired, angry, and resolute all at once and has continued to propel my own fight for greater representation and louder voices in the Asian community.

Cheryl Julia Lee, writer and literary scholar. My book of the year is Hamid Roslan's debut, parsetreeforestfire (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2019), which is a fiercely intelligent interrogation of language and self--and language and self in the Singaporean context. I've read some of his poems over the years and have eagerly anticipated his debut, but nothing prepared me for the full force of this collection. Each page is a revelation and a miracle of rhythm. I'm not even going to pretend that I fully understand this work, but I look forward to revisiting it over and over again. There is no poetic voice quite like Hamid's and I cannot wait to introduce his work to my students.

Christine Chia, writer. For my Singapore book of the year, I nominate Marylyn Tan's Gaze Back (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2018). It won the Singapore Literature Prize (Poetry 2020) because it is as crafty as it is crazy. There is definitely method in Marylyn's "madness". It's a book that you cannot be neutral about. For the non-Singaporean book, I nominate The 99% invisible city: a field guide to the hidden world of everyday design by Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt (USA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020). I'm learning a lot about how easy it is to live in a city for so long and miss out on so much of tiny but vital details of urban design if you don't have a guide to look out for them. This is a fairly big book but there are plenty of graphics that illustrate the authors' points.

Cyril Wong, poet and fictionist. Joshua Kam’s How the Man in Green Saved Pahang, and Possibly the World (Singapore: Epigram Books 2020). Borgesian, even Manichean, in its spiritual to existential scope, with almost reverent borrowings from Nusantara mythologies and Abrahamic religiosity, Kam’s novel is a wild ride from start to finish, riffing on Malayan history, contemporary politics and folklore in a surprisingly redemptive arc, while remaining deeply interrogative about what it means to keep true to goodness in the ever-changing face of evil.

Damon Chua, playwright. I’d recommend Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence (USA: Penguin Books, 2018). For anyone who has ever been curious about magic mushroom, ayahuasca, LSD, etc., Pollan (who penned The Omnivore’s Dilemma) carefully sidesteps the countercultural-hippie-hipster baggage to confronts us with the hard science of these mind-altering drugs. His conclusion: short of being a cure-all, these chemicals have been unfairly scheduled as controlled substances, curtailing their curative potential for a wide range of malaise including alcoholism, existential dread and even spiritual emptiness. Pollan’s review of these chemicals’ social history is particularly compelling, as is his own quest for the ultimate trip. In contrast, Paul Tan’s When the Lights Went Off (Singapore: Landmark Books, 2018) is at once grounded, contemplative, and nostalgic. Tan creates pithy verses that are never terse; instead, a lifetime of imagery may be found in a short stanza. Tan is not interested in showiness or pushing the envelope just to keep up with the fashion. His meter is measured, and his sensibilities refreshingly old-school. This volume feels like a well-worn, comfy pullover, or more appropriately, chamomile tea to be sipped just before bed. Which is the perfect time to consume this collection.

David Chew, festival director. Eating Chilli Crab in the Anthropocene, edited by Matthew Schneider-Mayerson (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2020). One of my lighter but serious reads this year, was Eating Chilli Crab in the Anthropocene, a super fun read I couldn’t put down, covering serious ecological and climate-related issues pertaining to contemporary Singapore’s growth and sustainability. The writers employ everyday Singapore icons from chilli crab to Tiger Beer as relatable entry points, and uncover interrelated historical, sociological, political and environmental issues all in one packed chapter per ‘icon’. At times feisty and perhaps revolutionary in tone, it’s a fascinating read which whets your appetite to find out more on the respective issues explored. Homeless by Liyana Dhamirah (Singapore: Epigram Books, 2019). I came across Homeless by Liyana Dhamirah earlier this year and it made for some uncomfortable reading, but much needed, in the light of the growing inequality and poverty we see around us today. Her story is both inspiring and saddening at the same time, as she shares her life journey from a teenager filled with much potential to being homeless living on a beach in Sembawang. The community and helpful saviors she meets while being homeless is inspiring and life-affirming, but her navigation of the very bureaucracy meant to help the people like her certainly highlights that a more empathetic approach is needed.

Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, author and editor. Epic doesn’t come close to describing Yeow Kai Chai’s One To The Dark Tower Comes (Singapore: Firstfruits Publications, 2020). The stylistics here are nothing short of grandiloquent. This is a poetry of supreme confidence, where no line is wasted or throwaway, even as the texts revel in sublime excess. Man oh Man, I’ve been waiting for this book for a decade. This is quintessentially Yeow Kai Chai. Reading it, I realize how much I’ve missed encountering this kind of poetry-making here—a craft-centered language so aesthetically autogenous and intramural. Indeed, the titular allusion to Edgar’s song in King Lear says it remarkably well: That the madness is in the method, not the faint veil of a madman, that Barthesian already-dead-dead-playing author. I’d also like to give a thumbs up to Food Republic: A Singapore Literary Banquet, edited by the splendid Ann Ang, Daryl Lim Wei Jie, and Tse Hao Guang (Singapore: Landmark Books, 2020). This anthology is a serious smorgasbord of literary treats, and readers are just savoring every lick and morsel of it!

Felix Cheong, poet and fiction writer. My top picks of the past year are undoubtedly the two short story collections, Elaine Chiew’s The Heartsick Diaspora and Other Stories (Penguin, 2019), and the recently released And Softly Go the Crossings (Penguin, 2020) by Danielle Lim. Both writers show their mastery of the short story form and infuse their tales with so much wit, wry observation of human nature and heart that you can’t help but wish you had written them yourself!

Ian Chung, writer and editor. My book of the year is GE2020: Fair or Foul? by Bertha Henson (Singapore: Epigram Books, 2020). A veteran of the journalism scene in Singapore, Bertha now teaches at the National University of Singapore's Communications and New Media Department. This highly readable book offers an unvarnished view of Singapore's electoral system, trotting out facts and statistics in true journalistic fashion to make its points. Wherever you lie on the political spectrum, this book should be essential reading to understand the nuts and bolts of what makes the electoral system tick, and the case for why it can be improved.

Jade Onn, literary scholar and editor. Based simply on how much I've returned to it over and over again this year, my book of 2020 has to be Ross Gay's The Book of Delights (USA: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2019), though it is Teo You Yenn's This Is What Inequality Looks Like (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2018) that continues to follow me everywhere ever since I first picked it up in 2018, with this year's elections reminding me once again of how important it is to be willing to critique the communities that we love the most. As Teo puts it, "Laundry needs to be aired. Don't shy. Maju, lah." I am always impressed by the way Teo is able to articulate all of these sociological nuances so clearly, bridging any discursive gap with simple and effective language that encourages critical thought and engagement from readers of all levels. And if Teo's book is where one can find the tools to start these conversations, then it is the delight of Gay's lyrical essays that reminds one of all the deeply human, hopeful, love that makes the work of having those difficult conversations both necessary and worth doing.

Jason Wee, artist and writer. Kenneth Tay's The Sea Is All Highway (Singapore: Temporary Press) is an essay-long investigation into Singapore's decades-long desire to encircle itself—as a red dot, as an SG50 logo, as a global city, as a smoothed-over, closed circuit. It's analytical and understatedly entertaining, and a great way to discover the work of one of Singapore's most fascinating small presses, responsible for new publications by Lai Yu Tong, Justin Zhuang and others.

Jason Soo, filmmaker. The best book I read this year is Direct Action: An Ethnography by David Graeber (AK Press, 2009). This book is more than ten years old, but it's just too important for me to pass over. There's many things to learn from Graeber's first-person account of the global justice movement. The one great idea that reverberates in my head is that of consensus decision-making. Variants of consensus decision-making has been used historically by indigenous communities and was even the primary decision-making model for European parliaments until around the 17th century. The idea itself has nothing to do with the kind of enforced consensus (backed by the threat of police violence of course) that pseudo-democracies are so fond of using in order to justify all sorts of discriminatory practices. On the contrary, consensus as a way to make group decisions adhere to two basic principles: (1) everyone has an equal chance to participate (equality), and (2) nobody should be compelled to do anything they don't want to (freedom). As a non-coercive, egalitarian and creative process, consensus decision-making fosters solidarity and serves as an exemplar for direct democracy. Readers and, in particular, activists looking for a way out of the tyranny of majoritarian democracy, should start by examining the usefulness of consensus decision-making in their work.

Jeremy Tiang, writer and translator. The cover of Sunisa Manning's A Good True Thai (Singapore: Epigram Books, 2020) features a house on fire, which seems entirely appropriate for 2020. The book is timely in other ways, telling the story of three young Thais going through a political awakening during the turbulent 1970s—even as unrest sweeps the country today. Yet this novel would be relevant in any era, stating as it does the importance of knowing what is worth fighting for, and the necessity of standing up for our beliefs—an invigorating call to arms. Also, a shout-out to Tania de Rozario's Somewhere Else, Another You (Singapore: Math Paper Press, 2018), which is structured like a choose-your-own-adventure novel, but turns out to be a möbius strip of endless existential possibilities. If you've been feeling detached from reality, this is the book to remind you that we live in a vast, unknowable universe, and all we can do to seek meaning is tend our little corner of it.

Jinat Rehana Begum, writer and educator. There were a number of books that I wanted to read, enjoy, and recommend this year but my pick has to be Liyana Dhamirah’s Homeless: The Untold Story of a Mother’s Struggle in Crazy Rich Singapore (Singapore: Epigram Books, 2019). It is a memoir, and so is classified as non-fiction. Yet this compelling story of a young twenty-two-year-old living rough at Sembawang beach while pregnant with her third child reads so much like fiction that I almost wish it was just another gothic fairytale. In a year of a multitude of inconveniences and uncertainties, this account of being homeless, hungry, and largely ignored in Singapore, has moved me to think about privileges enjoyed and people unseen.

Joanne Leow, literary scholar and writer. My book of the year is Souvankham Thammavongsa's How to Pronounce Knife (USA: Little, Brown and Company 2020/UK: Bloomsbury Circus, 2020). This short story collection about marginalized lives and refugee experiences is written in deceptively minimalist prose. At the heart of each story, however, is a bone deep truth about the indignities and foibles of human experience—all told with elegance and wry, gut-wrenching humor. Thammavongsa's characters stay with you as you wonder about their lives long after the stories conclude. My Singaporean text of the year is Alfian Sa’at and Neo Hai Bin’s Merdeka / 獨立 / சதநு திரம. Having watched the play online and perused its unpublished script, I think the play is the most significant literary attempt thus far to reckon with Singapore’s colonial past and neocolonial present. Looking forward to seeing an edition of the work.

Jon Gresham, writer and photographer. Highlights of my reading year include Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy (UK: Faber & Faber 2014, 2016, 2018), Gerry Alanguilan’s extraordinary Elmer (Singapore: Epigram Books, 2020) — chooks have feelings too, Majumdar Megha’s A Burning (Canada: McClelland & Stewart, 2020) and Martin Amis’s Inside Story (USA: Knopf, 2020) — was Martin Amis’s father from Hull? My Singapore book of the year is Homeless: The Untold Story of a Mother’s Struggle in Crazy Rich Singapore by Liyana Dhamirah (Singapore: Epigram Books, 2020). While the language is straightforward and the title a mouthful, this inspiring narrative is the first book on the experience of homelessness in Singapore. It is an interesting counterpoint to other narratives and should start conversations on personal choice and initiative, social support, the performance of state agencies, public policy, the criminalization of homelessness and structural inequality.

Joshua Ip, poet. My book of the year is Eating Chilli Crab in the Anthropocene, edited by Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, published by Ethos Books—what I took away from the book was not just the urgency of the sustainability and climate movement, but the vibrance and creativity of the (mostly young) thinkers in situating the huge global issues the book tackles at a very local and individual level—from orang minyak to islands of trash to the iconography of Tiger Beer to the humble chilli crab itself. It incepted me.

Janelle Tan, poet and essayist. John Murillo's Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry (USA: Four Way Books, 2020) is my book of the year. It speaks of racism and violence with a lyrical rage. Every poem is deeply urgent and highly charged, and each poem takes a completely different narrative approach and form. It's concerned with that ever-present idea of lineage, and uses Black male poetic lineage as context for anger and an invocation of survival. "On Confessionalism" (the opening poem) and the sonnet crown at the center of the book are two of the best poems I've read this year, and I think their meditations on racial injustice and violence in our communities are urgent and very necessary reading right now. My favorite Singaporean book of the year is Marylyn Tan's Gaze Back (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2018). I think it's a collection that is so necessary in Singapore right now. As poetry in Singapore becomes increasingly engaged with queerness and feminism, it's heartening to see a collection reflect that fiercely and be commercially and critically successful. It reflects the future of Singaporean poetry, and speaks to the poems we want to see—fierce, with an unflinching glare that turns on those who have not learned its lessons.

Yeow Kai Chai, poet. What’s really going on here? The book which has bewitched, bothered, and bewildered me the most this year is Snow at 5PM, by Koh Jee Leong (USA: Bench Press, 2020). In pandemic times where fake-news pedlers and conspiracy theorists connive to strike at the foundation of Truth, this slippery, meta-textual Hydra may just be the thing we didn’t know we need. A technologized remix of Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire and set in a trans-national and trans-lingual milieu involving a mysterious manuscript of haiku, Koh’s genre-leaping ode, subtitled “Translations of an Insignificant Japanese Poet,” keeps me hooked from page to page. This is exactly the kind of rigorous exercise to keep one’s faculties sharp in the face of apocalyptic doom. Is this a legit blurb by an actual person? Is fiction weirder than fact, or the other way around... or is this riffing on the worrisome plague of “alternative facts”? While many among us quarantine by imbibing Netflix, making sourdough bread, or generally feeling sorry for ourselves, it’s paramount not to let our brains atrophy along the way. I gasp then at the ambition of Koh’s undertaking—Easter eggs delightfully peppered throughout (Isn’t Prof Yi-Fen Chou of Columbia University on page x an allusion to the 2015 “yellowface” incident involving one white poet adopting an Asian-sounding name in order to get published?), and the panoply of literary and pop-cultural references, ranging from the “broken marriages” which litter the “scraggy fields” of American poetry, to the beleaguered case of veteran Korean-American actor Soon-Tek Oh who was often mistaken for Japanese. I could tell how much fun the author had, magicking this romp through (auto)biography, (multi)verse, commentary, fan-fiction, dramatic dialogue, cultural discourse—and so did I, the lucky beneficiary of his spirited invocation.

Kendrick Loo, reviews editor and poet. This year for me was spent revisiting Seán Hewitt's debut collection Tongues of Fire (USA: Jonathan Cape, 2020). Hewitt's poetic world is stitched with memory and longing, suffusing both flora and fauna with holiness so that "we might/ listen, and hear love spoken back to us." I find that his poems encourage me to slow down and contemplate the world around me. I've also been admiring the way that Mok Zining's The Orchid Folios (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2020) juxtaposes historical excerpts, ethnobotanical concepts, and narrative poetry. Mok's book leads readers to consider how Singaporean nature and landscapes are inextricably linked to human action and social structures, and it is a wonderful collection that holds its ground against the likes of Hamid Roslan's parsetreeforestfire (Ethos Books, 2019) and Marylyn Tan's Gaze Back (Ethos Books, 2019).

Kirsten Han, journalist. North Korea's Hidden Revolution: How the Information Underground is Transforming a Closed Society by Jieun Baek (USA: Yale University Press, 2016). I had this book for awhile before finally reading it this year. I found it a really fascinating study of the power of access to information, and how content from outside North Korea has had an impact on North Koreans. It made me think a lot about how the things we see and have access to affect our imaginations and perceptions. For a Singapore title, the main one that I've read in full this year so far is PAP v PAP: The Party's struggle to adapt to a changing Singapore by Donald Low and Cherian George (Singapore: Academia SG, 2020). [Kirsten’s response to PAP v PAP here]

Lydia Kwa, novelist and poet. The Burning God by R. F. Kuang (UK: Harper Voyager, 2020). I became a dedicated fan of Rebecca Kuang's writing after reading The Poppy War, the first in her trilogy. The Burning God served up a searing and excruciating conclusion as the last of the three books. It had me reading for hours on end, late into the night. Brilliant exploration of war, power, spirituality, greed, and vulnerability, as well as driven by great psychological explorations of the three main characters. The whole fantasy trilogy draws on Chinese history, especially The Opium War and the Rape of Nanking. Not for the faint of heart. Modern Myths by Clara Chow (Singapore: Math Paper Press, 2019). This year's nominee in the fiction category of the Singapore Literature Prize, Clara Chow's Modern Myths takes the reader through zany, subversive stories set in contemporary Singapore, where Greek gods and goddesses wrestle with earthly concerns and limitations. Wildly inventive, irreverent, and sometimes downright hilarious, the rollercoaster read contains flashes of genius alongside tender, complex portraits.

Marc Nair, poet and photographer. How The Man in Green Saved Pahang, and Possibly The World by Joshua Kam (Singapore: Epigram Books 2020). This is a rollicking ride across the physical, spiritual and ideological landscape of Malaysia. Kam is the youngest ever winner of the Epigram Books Fiction Prize and his debut novel showcases his lyrical prose and broad imagination while demonstrating a commitment to narrative integrity and a willingness to push the conversation on more conservative subjects such as LGBTQ issues, systemic corruption and the blight of the oil palm industry; subjects that are rarely broached.

Meira Chand, novelist. I end this year’s reading with two important books. The poet Edwin Thumboo and historian Wang Gungwu straddle the intellectual world of modern Singapore like colossi. Home Is Where We Are (Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 2020) is the second volume of Wang Gungwu’s memoir and The Votive Pen by Nilanjana Sengupta (Singapore: Penguin, 2020) is a biography of Edwin Thumboo. Both books are deeply personal, and their life stories cover the same era in time, running parallel with the history of modern Singapore, the building of a nation, the search for a cultural identity and what it means to be Singaporean. Wang Gungwu’s exploration of his intellectual journey as an academic is movingly intertwined with that of his wife Margaret’s own rich family story. Together they confront the dilemma of what constitutes home and place and a sense of belonging in their multicultural worlds. The book weaves a valuable tapestry of not only the journey towards a unique identity in a changing world, but what it means to have been part of the flow of history and the forming of modern Asia. Nilanjana Sengupta’s biography of Edwin Thumboo illuminates with consummate skill and intimacy the poet’s inner journey and its connections to his work and the process of creation.  It delves deeply into Thumboo’s multicultural heritage and the diverse cultural connections that meet within the man, of race and culture and religion. These have been the well-spring from which Thumboo, in his own words, has written himself through his poetry, from a place of marginality into the center of Singapore.  In Sengupta’s biography the importance of Thumboo’s work and its connection to the creating of modern Singapore is revealed with detailed sympathy.

Nuraliah Norasid, writer and educator. My books of 2020 would be The Armored Saint and The Queen of Crows from the Sacred Thrones series by Myke Cole (USA: Tor Books, 2018). I am especially taken with by the portrayal of the main protagonist, Heloise Factor, and her commoner-turn-leader/symbol journey in the series. The books do not shy away from the horrors of war and from showing the atrocities born of religious zealotry, especially when equipped with military might and the legitimacy of absolute authority. The series also treats the protagonist's sexuality with surprising complexity, authenticity, and humanity that is reminiscent of the growing-up struggles, fears, and uncertainties of members of the LGBTQ communities in the real world. I am excited to read the third installment of series. For my Sing Lit book of 2020, it would be The Java Enigma by Erni Salleh (Singapore: Epigram Books, 2020), not just for the incredible deep dives into the intriguing and rich histories of the Southeast Asian region or the page-turning mystery that unfolds, but for its capturing of the fluidity of the trade and cultural exchanges that characterize the region. Also, as someone engaged to a former seafarer, I appreciate the references to the sailing life and all things ocean-related.

O Thiam Chin, fictionist. In a year where much of what’s mass-produced and published in the US and UK have bored and disappointed me, it’s a small wonder to discover surprising gems in the world of translated literature. And no other book has impressed me more this year than Fernanda Melchor’s Hurricane Season (USA: New Directions, 20202), a remarkable novel that mixes urban lore, social decay, poverty, alienation, class and inequality into a gusty, explosive banger of a story. Melchor is a writer of inimitable ingenuity, and Hurricane Season is that very rare novel that breathes life and fire into a sapped and weary genre.

Philip Holden, literary scholar and writer. My book of the year is Memorandum: A Sinophone Singaporean Short Story Reader, edited by Quah Sy Ren and Hee Wai Siam, and translated by Tan Dan Feng (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2020). The anthology is unprecedented in terms of scope: an important collection of stories that map out a seventy-year literary history. Yet its most vital contribution is in another area, in the way we think of the literatures of Singapore. Tan Dan Feng’s careful translations from Chinese draw on the work of participants in the Select Centre’s translator programs. The stories often focus readers on the act of translation itself, and the fact that much of the creative force of Singapore literature in any language, given the nation’s polylingual lived environment, flows from the fact that it is always already translated.

Thum Ping Tjin, historian. I'd like to nominate Sound: A Comics Anthology, edited by my friend and New Naratif colleague Charis Loke, and Budjette Tan (Singapore: Difference Engine, 2020). It's a terrific range of comics on the theme of sound, which really show the versatility and creativity of the comics medium. I really enjoyed it.

Prasanthi Ram, writer and editor. Akshita Nanda’s Nimita’s Place (Singapore: Epigram Books, 2018) is my book of the year. Co-winner of the Singapore Literature Prize 2020 for English fiction, this 447-paged mammoth novel is a page-turner that glides smoothly between Nimita Khosla and her granddaughter Nimita Sachdev. Khosla's narrative begins before the Partition of India as a mere seventeen-year-old, while Sachdev's narrative begins after her emigration from India to Singapore to work as a microbiologist. Despite the seventy-year gap, the parallel narratives reveal that constant and conscious effort has always been required on a woman’s part to carve sufficient space in a patriarchal world. A nuanced portrait of two remarkable, even if fictional, Indian women across generations, Nimita’s Place is sure to make any reader an instant fan of Akshita Nanda.

Samuel Lee, poet and cultural worker. 2020 will go down as my year of the cookbook. Alison Roman’s Nothing Fancy (New York: Clarkson Potter, 2019) kept me sane during the worst parts of winter in the Midwest. A nontrivial amount of time was spent shoving paper tabs into pages of brothy beans and salty martinis while sheltering-in-place and dreaming of large-format dinner platters, gatherings of more than five, and an overflowing kitchen sink. But when I returned to Singapore in April, it was Christopher Tan’s The Way of Kueh (Singapore: Epigram Books, 2020) that re-centered me with thoughts of freshly squeezed pandan and the gentle wilting of glossy banana leaves on a gas stove, one’s fingers gloriously sticky with pulut and sago. More than a compilation of recipes for kueh—a commodious term that includes both sweet and savory, plush and crunchy confections eaten before, during and after meals—the cookbook is an argument for what Tan calls “food perspectives,” in contrast to consumption-driven encounters. Food is a kind of world-making, if you will. The Way of Kueh records, in loving and exacting detail, the foodways that weave in and out of interrelated histories, communities, languages and sensibilities, and it compelled me to re-evaluate my own assumptions about identity and belonging in the same way a great work of literature would. Meanwhile, on the poetry front, the two collections that captivated me this year were Andrea Yew’s In These Curved Spaces (Singapore: Math Paper Press, 2019) and Hamid Roslan’s parsetreeforestfire (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2019). There is a sweetness to Yew’s collection, which is also cutting in its self-analysis, and her work is studded with surprising turns. While Roslan’s collection has been commended for its bracing intelligence, I find in its kernel a kind of awful and uncommon tenderness, the result of grafting the mourning of enunciative poverty onto the ecstasies of citation and worldliness.

Yong Shu Hoong, poet. I gifted a copy of American poet Jane Hirshfield’s ninth collection of poetry, Ledger (USA: Alfred A. Knopf, 2020), to a friend, and kept for myself another copy—whose cover I wrapped by hand with protective plastic sheet. This has to be a book of some significance for me to go through such hassles. I guess there are two major types of poetry books I gravitate towards: One that’s close to my own poetic sensibilities, with ideas for incremental enhancements for my craft; and another that’s so strikingly different in approach and outlook that it fills me with wild dreams of experimentation and makeover. Ledger falls under the first kind—a title that immediately makes me think of an accounting term, among many that I learned during my MBA course but never properly utilized. Of course, I would expect appropriation, how the record-keeping system for a company’s financial data can be reinterpreted as metaphor to track seemingly commonplace objects—”The Bowl,” “A Ream of Paper,” and even “Husband”—as well as instincts and entitlements cuddled close to heart—”My Doubt,” “My Hunger,” “My Dignity,”… and “My Silence,” an empty page. Hirshfield lets her words sing and dance, always making the effort feel light in the process, and often with a spare haiku-like quality in linking nature to the human condition. She easily and elegantly navigates from the declarative anthem “Let Them Not Say” that kickstarts the collection, to the closing poem, “My Debt,” in which she admits “Like all / who believe in the senses,/ I was an accountant,/ copyist,/ statistician” and to entering “the debt that is owed to the real.” I suspect this is a book that I will dive back into, again and again—this “registry,” as Hirshfield’s publisher describes, “both personal and communal, of our present-day predicaments.” The Singapore title I’d recommend is Yeow Kai Chai’s One to the Dark Tower Comes (Singapore: Firstfruits Publications, 2020), his third poetry collection whose existence I have known of more than a decade ago. This book would fall under the latter type of poetry books I spoke of earlier, one that would leave me behind in the dust, gasping for air yet wanting to catch up. The exquisite book design aside (the cover sleeve can be dismantled and unfolded into a poster), this is an enthralling journey in sound and form—from the variations on the same title “A Slit from Sternum to Pizzle” to different “quarterly reports,” culminating in the epic closing poem, “Another to the Dark Tower Comes.” Guided by a solid concept, and brimming with mastery and freedom in craft, as well as cult appeal, this Dark Tower is worth the anticipation.

Sonny Liew, graphic novelist. I've only just started reading it, but Kurt Andersen's Evil Geniuses (USA: Random House, 2020) has so far been an excellent interpretation of how once fringe libertarian ideas have taken such hold in the United States; it reminded me of the ecosystems that are cultivating/breeding young Singaporean academics whose writings pop up in opinion pages and social media posts, rooted in libertarian nonsense, but learned enough to sound plausible to some. There was also Michael Sandel's The Tyranny of Merit (USA: Allen Lane, 2020)—as with all of Sandel's writings, complex ideas are expressed with fantastic clarity. Meritocracy on the surface sounds like such a good thing, has been so ingrained in us here in Singapore, that it was a bit of a shock to the system to see its problems exposed. I reread a couple of graphic novels by Emmanuel Guibert—Alan's War and How the World Was. The writing was great; and as for the art—well, I remember seeing an exhibition of his work once, and being struck by being in the presence of a proper art maker—someone who could turn any material at hand into something transcendent, or interesting at the very least.

Suchen Christine Lim, novelist. I recommend two books of the year, one of which was overlooked last year. Flying Sleeves: The Grandeur of Chinese Opera, a coffee table book by Dr. Chua Ee Kiam, was published in 2018 by Simply Green, Singapore. I rarely buy coffee table books. But when I saw the brilliant photos and the text I could not resist it. The chapters documented the operatic art as seen through the eyes of an avid local opera fan (not an expatriate photographer emphasizing the exotic). Since 2001, UNESCO had designated three types of Chinese opera—Kunju opera, Cantonese opera, and Beijing opera—as Intangible Cultural Treasures of Humanity. The author had documented more than 80 opera performances in Singapore over a period of 12 years, many of which I had watched. “For a performer to stand on stage for three minutes, she needs 10 years of rigorous training,” so said a master of the art. The photos and text in the book show you the range of skills that an opera artiste has to master. To reach the highest levels of performance, the artiste has to master singing, recitation, acting, dance, stylistic movement, and gesture for the opera’s civil repertoire, and gymnastics and kungfu for the martial repertoire. Do look it up in the National Library. My second book of the year is Jing-Jing Lee’s novel, How We Disappeared (UK: Oneworld Publications, 2019). A heart-breaking story of girls forced to be comfort women to ‘service’ the young desperate soldiers in the Japanese army during WWII. I use the word ‘service’ deliberately for that was what Wang Di and the other young women were forced to do in a military brothel, forced to provide a sexual service as emotionless and mechanical as servicing a car’s piston so that the whole machine would function well. The novel reveals the horror and degradation of both the young women and the soldiers. The story moves between the past and present. Between Wang Di’s years of suppressed memories and a twelve-year-old boy Kevin’s troubles at home and school as he looked through his dead grandmother’s box of papers and eventually found Wang Di, the old cardboard granny living in a dingy three-room HDB flat.

Tania De Rozario, writer and artist. My book of the year is Billy-Ray Belcourt's This Wound Is A World (Canada: Frontenac House Poetry, 2017). This collection of poems is stunning, full of vivid imagery and language that lingers—it burns with strength and defiance that not only refuses to succumb to colonial power and heteronormative hegemony, but also rises above it. The perfect companion to this book would be Marylyn Tan's Gaze Back (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2018). Who does not need more fierce, feminist, queer witchcraft to right the shitty world we're inhabiting right now?

Tan Tarn How, writer. Severance by Ling Ma (USA: FSG, 2018): Set during a killer epidemic originating in China, this is a compelling quest story pulling together themes of capitalism, work culture, exploitation, and love. Big Mole by Ming Cher (Singapore: Epigram Books, 2015): A tighter and more fun follow-up crime adventure to the author's Spider Boys that richly evokes a time of triads and racial possibilities.

William Phuan, arts administrator. Home Is Not Here by Wang Gungwu (Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 2018) and Home Is Where We Are by Wang Gungwu with Margaret Wang (Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 2020). Written with a direct, dispassionate tone and an analytical, inquisitive approach, the two volumes chronicle the fascinating life of the preeminent scholar and intellectual against a backdrop of seismic changes in Asia and the region. Born in Dutch-ruled Surabaya, growing up in Ipoh, studying in China and the then-University of Malaya in Singapore, Wang has called many places home—Malaysia, England, Australia, Hong Kong, and Singapore. His study of Chinese history and the Chinese diaspora seems to be intertwined with the emotional and intellectual formation of his own pluralistic identity. The second volume also incorporates writings of his late wife Margaret, weaving both of their perspectives together to capture their family life, love, and the elusive sense of belonging and home.

Gui Weihsin, literary scholar. Cordite Poetry Review Issue 99: Poetry from Singapore. This special issue of Cordite Poetry Review features 37 poems from Singapore in multiple languages transcreated into English by other poets in collaboration with the original author; there's also an insightful editorial essay about the difficulties and possibilities of representing Singapore's polyphonic and heteroglossic milieu. I read poets I'd never come across before writing in and beyond Singapore's four official languages (English, Chinese, Malay, Tamil). It is a testament to the determination of the editors and the poets who dared to think and write across, with, and through linguistic difference.

Yen Yen Woo, CEO, Yumcha Studios. Diary of a Confused Feminist by Kate Weston (UK: Hodder’s Children Books, 2020). As the world of the coronavirus and a certain orange menace was getting me down this year, Kate Weston immersed me instead in the world of teenage crushes, tampon confetti, and flying “fillet à boobies.” Laugh-out-loud hilarity, a sensitivity to growing pains, and much more than that, an optimism for a kinder, gentler world where people do grow up and where individual and collective action can make the world better. My tween daughter insisted that I read this book and I’m glad she did. 

Ng Yi-Sheng, poet, playwright, and fictionist. Not a lot of new books got published this year, but Cyril Wong's novella This Side of Heaven (Singapore: Epigram Books, 2020) is well worth celebrating. It's a sequence of monologues by the dead, narrated from a strange, surreal afterlife, informed by Christianity, Buddhism, queerness, and Cyril's distinctive brand of crystalline, transcendent sorrow. I'm also kicking myself a little for not nominating Balli Kaur Jaswal's The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters (USA: William Morrow, 2019) last year. It's styled as a funny, fast-paced chick lit novel, but it's also a fascinating and moving exploration of the experiences of young modern women in the Sikh diaspora, with revelations and traumas revealed as they perform a pilgrimage to the holy city of Amritsar.