It feels unkind to reveal a long-held secret of Who Wants to Buy a Book of Poems? published in 1988 – the published form, known and loved for years, is quite unlike the poet’s original manuscript. In 1998, when Landmark Books sought to introduce Gwee Li Sui, it reckoned that a slim, focused volume could showcase his distinct voice better. That decision had led to the manuscript being halved and its shape changed subtly. Also, Who Wants to Buy a Book of Poems? was a very naughty book and, given the sensitivity of the times, a gentler text was published. The current book sees a couple of those changes reversed only because more readers today are able to bring the right frame of mind to their reading. While reading this unexpurgated edition, you may get a pricking sense of the poet being an excitable madman. What manner of madness he suffered remains unclear. With nothing left but silly speculations, do enjoy this recovered text or to correct your enjoyment of an old book you thought you knew.

2719 presents a history of the future. It is a creative prognosis that charts how Singapore will develop for the next seven hundred years. Moments in the island’s real history will reverberate through the course of its current challenges, its cycles of self-making, and the future of our world order.

From the Preface The sacrifices of migrant workers are written in every inch of Singapore – in the bricks of buildings, ship irons, under the floor of houses. Thousands of years later, someone may hear the story of our pain and sacrifice from the walls of this city. After about a decade here, I have many stories and recollections to share with you. This diary contains the collected fragments of my experiences. It is not my intention to write anything against my homeland or this country. No hurt feelings, please. I have just written down the most valuable moments of my life here. This diary records observations from my reality. From the Foreword by Gwee Li Sui The records from hours between 2008 and 2016 take us on a harsh, profoundly emotional journey. Let us remember that we are meeting a passage of real life that runs concurrent to ours within this alleged city of dreams. The book is therefore urgent because it breaks open the hearts of readers to what our eyes fail to see. As Sharif’s words invade our sense of self and of place, our world cannot be the same again.

“Perhaps I will write about my own life as a blind person,” Choon Guan said. “I’ll entitle it My Love is Blind. The word blind will embrace your name, Lin.” His big eyes widened and lit up, sparkling and full of tenderness. His lips moved in a soundless whisper: “My Love is Lin.” Tan Guan Heng lost his sight at the age of 28. In his first novel, he paints a nostalgic picture of Singapore on the brink of independence. With biting honesty and ironic humour, this novel brings to life the world of the blind and their sighted helpers. More than twenty years after its first publication in 1995, My Love is Blind has retained its enduring appeal as one of Singapore’s most extraordinary and memorable novels. Asiapac Books is pleased to launch a special edition of this groundbreaking novel, updated with an epilogue and a new foreword by Dr. Tommy Koh, and an afterword by literary critic, Gwee Li Sui. An excerpt from the afterword: “…My Love is Blind is a deeply rational book because the writing involves distinct technical questions about constructing reality. It explains a quality of composure where, even at his lowest, Choon Guan entertains neither despair nor death. Ultimately, we must see the heart of this work as a great belief in life, what can hold together and transform all the fragments of self.”

It feels unkind to reveal a long-held secret of Who Wants to Buy a Book of Poems? published in 1988 – the published form, known and loved for years, is quite unlike the poet’s original manuscript. In 1998, when Landmark Books sought to introduce Gwee Li Sui, it reckoned that a slim, focused volume could showcase his distinct voice better. That decision had led to the manuscript being halved and its shape changed subtly. Also, Who Wants to Buy a Book of Poems? was a very naughty book and, given the sensitivity of the times, a gentler text was published. The current book sees a couple of those changes reversed only because more readers today are able to bring the right frame of mind to their reading. While reading this unexpurgated edition, you may get a pricking sense of the poet being an excitable madman. What manner of madness he suffered remains unclear. With nothing left but silly speculations, do enjoy this recovered text or to correct your enjoyment of an old book you thought you knew.

The Encyclopedia of American Poetry: The Twentieth Century contains over 400 entries that treat a broad range of individual poets and poems, along with many articles devoted to topics, schools, or periods of American verse in the century. Entries fall into three main categories: poet entries, which provide biographical and cultural contexts for the author's career; entries on individual works, which offer closer explication of the most resonant poems in the 20th-century canon; and topical entries, which offer analyses of a given period of literary production, school, thematically constructed category, or other verse tradition that historically has been in dialogue with the poetry of the United States.