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City Of Others author Jared Poon thinks civil service bureaucrats are sexy and magical
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Singaporean writer Jared Poon's debut novel City Of Others follows a middle manager bureaucrat engaging with his unlikely stakeholders – the supernatural inhabitants of Singapore.
ST PHOTO: GIN TAY
SINGAPORE – Former civil servant Jared Poon started out telling stories about Singapore’s futures to fellow civil servants and politicians in policy papers he wrote at the Centre for Strategic Futures under the Prime Minister’s Office. Now, he has turned to writing a fantasy trilogy about a bureaucrat engaging with unlikely stakeholders – the supernatural inhabitants of Singapore.
“Civil service work is much sexier than people think. You’re deciding the course of a nation, or some fragment of it – and that’s super cool,” the 46-year-old tells The Straits Times on the publication of his debut novel, City Of Others, by Orbit Books, in January 2026.
