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A History of Amnesia


PART OF Ethos Classics SERIES
Publisher: Ethos Books
S$18.00
  • Description
  • Praise
  • About the Author
  • Unapologetic, unafraid and unyielding, Alfian Sa’at’s second collection of verse delves deeper into the concerns in his first volume and moves into reclaiming our collective history and memory. In mining our psyche, he casts light where whispers and shadows lurk. He draws inspiration from censored histories, subsumed myths and invokes imagined voices from the exiled, demanding of the reader to witness the ubiquitous ideological fictions that surround us. This is one of the most dissonant and penetrating voices in Singapore poetry.

    Reissued under the Ethos Classics series, this edition includes a new conversation between Alfian Sa’at and founding publisher of Ethos Books, Fong Hoe Fang.

    About Ethos Classics
    Treasured reads that resonate across time and the region. Fresh, different, enduring—since 1997.

  • “The poetry does matter—even when its subject matter is unpoetically political or social. Alfian Sa’at is that rare talent who not only has something to say—urgently and passionately—but also knows how to say it well. This second collection reveals the poet maturing, chancing new lines, always growing. There are things here—an image, a metaphor, the lyrical turn of a taut phrase—that will astonish and amaze the reader. I closed the volume with a sense of gratitude: Poetry does matter.”
    —Janadas Devan, The Straits Times Leader Writer (2001)

  • Alfian Sa’at is a Resident Playwright with W!LD RICE. His published works include three collections of poetry, One Fierce Hour, A History of Amnesia and The Invisible Manuscript, a collection of short stories, Corridor, a collection of flash fiction, Malay Sketches, and three collections of plays—Collected Plays One, Two and Three, and the published plays Cooling-Off Day, HOTEL and The Death of Singapore Theatre as Scripted By the Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore.

ISBN: 9789811781629
Cover Type: Paperback
Page Count: 114
Year Published: 2026
Size: 210mm x 150mm
Language: English