Ministry Of Moral Panic, 3rd. Edition

Winner of Best Fiction Title for Singapore Book Awards 2016
Winner of the Singapore Literature Prize for Fiction 2014
Longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award 2014
Selected by The Business Times as one of the Top 10 English Singapore books from 1965–2015

Amanda Lee Koe (Delayed Rays of a Star) made her mark with this debut collection of short fiction, with tales as colourful as their characters.

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. Find out the truth about racial riot fodder-girl Maria Hertogh, now 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.

Ministry of Moral Panic is an extraordinary collection and the introduction of a revelatory new voice. 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 stories that plough the possibilities of understanding Singapore and her denizens.

Cover design based on the Polish Edition by Tajfuny, 2020