SINGAPORE - Another December, another pandemic year done and dusted. Here are The Sunday Times' top 10 books from 2021 to help you turn the page to what one can only hope will be a better year.
These titles are arranged in no particular order.
1. Black Water Sister
By Zen Cho
Macmillan/Paperback/370 pages/$29.43/Available here
Jessamyn Teoh, an unemployed university graduate and closeted lesbian stuck in her hometown of Penang, is drafted by her dead grandmother into becoming the medium for a vengeful local goddess.
A spirited ride through a Malaysia both modern and mystical, Cho's third novel combines humour and supernatural thrills to expose a darker reality of violence against women and exploitation.
2. We Make Spaces Divine
By Pooja Nansi
Math Paper Press/Hardcover/156 pages/$26.75/Available here
One is often told one must rethink space in the pandemic, but this vibrant collection from Singaporean poet Pooja Nansi shows how spaces can be reclaimed.
In rich verse, she paints a city that she loves fiercely, but is not always sure she belongs in. The collection is also a mosaic of her past, present and possible futures, and tackles racism and sexism. Above all, it is shot through with a fierce and defiant joy.
3. Klara And The Sun
By Kazuo Ishiguro
Faber & Faber/Paperback/307 pages/$28.84/Available here
The Nobel Laureate of Literature's eighth novel is, on one level, a simple story about a robot, a girl and the sun.
Yet, it is constructed so precisely and artlessly that its simplicity is profoundly moving. In a near-future America, Klara, a solar-powered Artificial Friend, is purchased as a companion for a sickly teenager, Josie.
Klara embarks on a quest to seek out the sun and bargain with him to save a dying Josie.
4. After The Inquiry
By Jolene Tan
Ethos Books/Paperback/220 pages/$20.33/Available here
This chilling Singaporean novel takes the form of a government report about an unauthorised firearm discharge that has left a police sergeant in a coma.
Veteran civil servant Boon Teck and his idealistic young subordinate Nithya re-examine the facts of the case - and, in so doing, discover the cracks in the system. Tan creates an unsettling portrait of bureaucracy, helmed by a fascinatingly unreliable narrator.
5. Great Circle
By Maggie Shipstead
Doubleday/Paperback/591 pages/$29.96/Available here
In 1950, the aviatrix Marian Graves attempts to circumnavigate the globe in 1950, only to vanish in Antarctica.
Over half a century later, scandal-ridden Hollywood starlet Hadley Baxter is tapped to play the lost aviatrix in a biopic. Shipstead soars in this expansive, beautiful novel about women and flight.
6. At Night All Blood Is Black
By David Diop, translated by Anna Moschovakis
Pushkin Press/Paperback/160 pages/$19.94/Available here
When Alfa Ndiaye, a Senegalese soldier in World War I, watches his best friend Mademba Diop die a terrible, protracted death on the battlefield, it eviscerates his mind. This harrowing and expertly translated novel, which made Diop the first French author and the first of African heritage to win the International Booker Prize, packs a punch.
7. The Right To Sex
By Amia Srinivasan
Bloomsbury/Paperback/268 pages/$32.95/Available here
Oxford professor Srinivasan trots out six essays on gender and sex of the highest quality - each one a joy to read and informed by the latest ideas.
From the dangers of pornography to interracial dating, her fearlessness in engaging with touchy topics makes her voice a real standout in a time of popular reckoning for gender relations not seen since the 1960s and 1970s.
8. Beautiful World, Where Are You
By Sally Rooney
Faber/Paperback/340 pages/$28.89/Available here
One of the most-hyped books of the year, Rooney's third novel thrums with millennial anxiety.
Alice, a young and outrageously famous novelist, starts dating Felix, a warehouse worker whom she met on Tinder, while her best friend Eileen grapples with her complex relationship with her childhood friend Simon.
It is basically just a novel about people getting together and breaking up - and it is marvellous.
9. The Formidable Miss Cassidy
By Meihan Boey
Epigram Books/Paperback/237 pages/$26.64/Available here
The co-winner of this year's Epigram Books Fiction Prize is an utter delight.
Miss Leda Cassidy arrives in 1890s Singapore from Scotland to serve as a paid companion to the Bendemeer family, whose garden is haunted by a pontianak.
While sorting that out, she also catches the attention of prominent businessman Kay Wing Tong, whose household suffers from a mysterious curse. An irrepressible romp.
10. Harlem Shuffle
By Colson Whitehead
Fleet/Paperback/318 pages/$29.95/Available here
Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Whitehead has some fun for a change with this stylish heist novel, set in the mid-century Harlem of New York City.
Ray Carney, upstanding business owner and family man, is reluctantly dragged into the criminal underworld by his feckless cousin Freddie.
Whitehead delivers the goods with both the eloquence of an urban theorist and the relish of an old genre hand.
