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Longlisted for Epigram Books Fiction Prize 2015

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In an alternate 1947 filled with mystical creatures, Singapuran boy-soldier Naufal Jazair is bonded to the merlion Bahana and enlisted in a war against an aggressive neighbour. Meanwhile, in a dystopian Singapore in 2047, SAF officer Titus Ang is tasked with entering Naufal’s universe and retrieving a merlion to save the future of Singapore from the Concordance, a hive intelligence that is close to consuming what remains of humanity.
“A powerful monster of a novel. Intertwining myth and history, gender and sexuality, human and animal, Altered Straits adds its own unique voice to the growing tradition of speculative fiction in Singaporean writing.”
—Philip Holden, author of Heaven Has Eyes and Professor of English, National University of Singapore

“A compulsively readable melding of SF and fantasy, intelligent and entertaining, with a refreshingly different world view.”
—Eric Brown, author of Helix Wars
Kevin Martens Wong is a linguistics major at the National University of Singapore and the editor-in-chief of Unravel: The Accessible Linguistics Magazine. He won the NUS Creative Writing Competition in 2015 for his short story “A Merlion for His Majesty”, and his work has been published in Entlitled magazine. In his spare time, he also works to revitalise the endangered Kristang language in Singapore. He loves books, bicycles, cats, languages, science fiction, most marine mammals and the colour orange, and hopes to become the world’s first astrolinguist before advanced human civilisation ceases to exist in 2039.

Epigram Books Fiction Prize

Altered Straits