Poetry
One Fierce Hour
Alfian Sa'at · 1998
Synopsis
Short, direct poems that observe Singapore in the late nineties with candour, sarcasm and tenderness. The best known, “Singapore You Are Not My Country”, lists with passion what the poet reproaches his country for and looks for another beginning for it: he invokes the legendary prince Sang Nila Utama rather than Stamford Raffles, founder of the colonial city.
Context
The collection appeared in 1998 with Landmark Books, when its author was twenty-one and studying medicine; it is his first book, followed the next year by a collection of twelve short stories. Slim, at forty-eight pages, it has never gone out of availability and had a second edition in 2014. The poet Lee Tzu Pheng praises in the Straits Times a natural talent for imagery, and the poem about the country earned its author a reputation as an enfant terrible. The book has not left the country's anthologies since.
Who it is for
A very short collection, in English, that can be read in one sitting; it does not exist in French, and its allusions assume some familiarity with Singapore.
Prizes and reception
Counted by the Straits Times among the ten books of 1998, and since included in the standard anthologies of Singaporean literature.