Singapore shelf

POETRY

ENGLISH BREAKFAST

By Jay Bernard

Math Paper Press/Paperback/48 pages/$16/BooksActually

British poet Jay Bernard writes movingly of family, race and culture.

This second collection of her verse is the first to be published in and partly inspired by Singapore.

Look out for lyrical poems such as The Language Of Fish, written here in 2011, when she was the first to take up a creative writing residency offered by The Arts House and the National University of Singapore's University Scholars Programme.

CHILDREN'S

DANGER DAN CONFRONTS THE MERLION MASTERMIND

By Lesley-Anne & Monica Lim

Epigram Books/Paperback/112 pages/$10.90 before GST/Major Bookstores

DANGER DAN TACKLES THE MAJULAH MAYHEM

By Lesley-Anne & Monica Lim

Epigram Books/Paperback/128 pages/$10.90 before GST/In bookstores from today

Written by a mother-and-daughter duo, this fun new series for eight- to 12-year-olds mixes local history, comic book-style action and funky illuJstrations.

Eleven-year-old Dan sees his daydreams about being a superhero coming true when he meets Melody, a girl from the future.

In each book, they travel back in time to prevent Singapore's history from being written very differently - fancy a Merlion with orchids around its head?

LOST IN TAIPEI! THE TRAVEL DIARY OF AMOS LEE

By Adeline Foo

Epigram Books/Paperback/164 pages/$12.90 before GST/In bookstores from Thursday

Amos Lee's previous diaries sold thousands of copies here as he learnt to swim and Tweet, and suffered his mother editing the journal entries he wrote while on the toilet.

Now he must navigate Taipei on his own after he is separated from classmates on a school trip.

NON-FICTION

ANWAR IBRAHIM: EVOLUTION OF A MUSLIM DEMOCRAT

By Charles Allers

Monsoon Books/Paperback/336 pages/$23.01/Books Kinokuniya, Popular and Times

This biography written by American academic Charles Allers aims to explain the controversies surrounding Malaysian politician Anwar Ibrahim. The book itself seems to be generating controversy, as news portal Malaysiakini reported on Feb 14 that some Malaysian bookstores are not carrying the title. An earlier edition was brought out last October by Peter Lang International Academic Publishers. This edition by local imprint Monsoon Books has eight extra pages of photographs.

THOSE DAYS IN MURAMATSU

By Yumi Goto

NUS Press/Paperback/158 pages/$28/From www.nus.edu.sg/nuspress or call 6776-1148

This is the extraordinary memoir of an ordinary Japanese housewife who served as translator to American troops in her country in 1945.

It is full of fascinating insights into both cultures, starting with the introduction in which Goto explains that she wrote the book in English because the Japanese "would not want to recall the memories of the period when the nation was humiliated" after World War II. An earlier edition of this book was published in 2007 by the University of Kansas' Center for East Asian Studies.

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