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. Rehash national icons: the truth about racial riot fodder-girl Maria
Hertogh 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.
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, relentlessly, the
possibilities of understanding Singapore and her denizens discursively, and off-centre.
Ministry
of Moral Panic was selected by The Business Times as one of the Top 10 English
Singapore books from 1965—2015.