Curator’s note
This award-winning debut collection from Amanda Lee Koe plumbs the depths of Singaporean memory to present stories about sex, morality and human connection. In this book, the author takes risk after risk to create fresh perspectives and interpretations of our national myths – and they pay off.
Synopsis
Meet an over-the-hill Pop Yé-yé singer with a faulty heart, two conservative middle-aged women holding hands in the Galápagos, and the proprietor of a Laundromat with a penchant for Cantonese songs of heartbreak. 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.
About the author
Born in Singapore and based in New York, Amanda Lee Koe is the youngest winner of the Singapore Literature Prize for her first short story collection Ministry of Moral Panic, shortlisted for the Haus der Kulturen der Welt's Internationaler Literaturpreis, and the Frankfurt Book Fair's LiBeraturpreis.
About The Unicorn Library
The Unicorn Library is Singapore’s free LGBTQ+ library, supported and run by Heckin’ Unicorn. We want to empower Singaporeans to read, understand, and enjoy queer books. Our collection of books is small but curated and growing!
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