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When 7-year-old Anna told a lie to get out of trouble, she didn’t expect her older sister to go missing. Faced with her mother’s wrath and riddled with guilt, Anna tries to make amends as she grapples with the aftermath of her actions.

Until her daughter’s body is found, Su Lai refuses to believe that she has simply disappeared. Turning to a medium as her obsession to find her daughter escalates, the family is sucked into a web of pain and deceit that forces them to confront their own measures of loss. A masterful debut by Jinny Koh, The Gods Will Hear Us Eventually boldly interrogates the extent of familial love and expectation while unravelling the complexities of hope and redemption.

Singapore is small, a complex country full of contradictions, inconsistencies and idiosyncrasies. Often held up as a model nation, we sometimes forget that Singapore is seen differently by different people. With a decade of activism and journalism experience, Kirsten Han reveals various aspects of her home country that don’t follow what many of us know as the conventional ‘Singapore Story’. The Singapore I Recognise is Kirsten’s reckoning with civil society’s experiences of Singapore, perspectives that are often unheard, or fall through the cracks. Through researched interviews and heartfelt reflections, Kirsten tells us how parts of Singapore are already moving towards communal care, solidarity, empowerment and hope. This is a resonant portrayal of home in the island city-state.

“If you live in Singapore, you know it is a place with more layers and complexities than meets the eye. Yet, it is not always possible to grasp what lies beneath the glossy stories of economic success, social harmony, and political stability. Kirsten Han’s book—part reflexive memoir, part incisive reporting—is an informative, nuanced, and deeply humane series of essays that helps us better understand and appreciate the contradictions, tensions, and power plays that are integral to the Singapore story. Read it to learn new things, read it to feel big emotions, read it to expand your thinking on the realities and possibilities of home.”
—Teo You Yenn, sociologist and author of This is What Inequality Looks Like

“When Kirsten Han sees something, she says something, especially when that something is an injustice that afflicts the weak in Singapore’s extremely privileged society. This book encapsulates the values she has fearlessly espoused for years, and for which she continues to pay a personal price. Unable to counter her arguments on the merits, the establishment has subjected her to smears and harassment. One day, her conscientious contributions will be lauded. Until then, Kirsten Han is the eye that too few in Singapore recognise. The country is blinder for it.”
—Cherian George, Author of Air-Conditioned Nation Revisited

This book contains descriptions of physical violence, mentions of incarceration and themes related to the death penalty, as well as references to arrests and interrogation. We recognise that the ways in which readers might respond to and deal with these issues may vary, as our relationships to these topics are unique. If you find yourself feeling overwhelmed, personally affected or unable to engage with this content at present, feel free to put this book down and talk to someone about how you feel, or consult the resources printed at the back.

Can a life weave along through the same notes and yet come to play forth different sounds?

The Sound of SCH (pronounced S-C-H) is the true story of a journey with mental illness, beautifully told by Danielle Lim from a time when she grew up witnessing her uncle's untold struggle with a crippling mental and social disease, and her mother's difficult role as caregiver. The story takes place between 1961 and 1994, backdropped by a fast-globalising Singapore where stigmatisation of persons afflicted with mental illness nevertheless remains deep-seated. Unflinchingly raw and honest in its portrayal of living with schizophrenia, The Sound of Sch is a moving account of human resiliency and sacrifice in the face of brokenness.

This New Edition of This Is What Inequality Looks Like by Teo You Yenn features a new Afterword by the author, and a Foreword by Kwok Kian Woon, Professor of Sociology at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

What is poverty? What is inequality? How are they connected? How are they reproduced? How might they be overcome? Why should we try?

The way we frame our questions shapes the way we see solutions. This book does what appears to be a no-brainer task, but one that is missing and important: it asks readers to pose questions in different ways, to shift the vantage point from which they view ‘common sense,’ and in so doing, to see themselves as part of problems and potential solutions. This is a book about how seeing poverty entails confronting inequality. It is about how acknowledging poverty and inequality leads to uncomfortable revelations about our society and ourselves. And it is about how once we see, we cannot, must not, unsee.

In Singapore, a loudly ‘pro-family’ society, why is work-life balance so elusive? And why are parents so uneasy? What accounts for this gap between the lived reality and ideal narrative of Singapore families?

Sociologist and bestselling author Teo You Yenn turns her eyes to the contours and rhythms of life inside families, exploring how ‘kiasu’ parents are made and investigating the ways in which inequality marks life in contemporary Singapore. Drawing from in-depth interviews with parents from all walks of life, Unease examines how social structures, individual strategies and common practices come to produce Singaporean ‘cultures’ of doing family.

An incisive exposé of how the logics of hierarchy, competition and unequal worth infect ordinary people’s lives, Unease asks what these cost parents, children and the values we hold as a society. And what possibilities are there for living differently?

Advocates and activists in Singapore contribute to policy discussions and positive change through a combination of deft manoeuvres and patient politics. Yet civil society is often unacknowledged, their skill and labour instead frequently misunderstood, even earning them the label of “troublemakers” or “enemies of the state.”

This collection of essays and interviews is a candid reflection on the intentions, beliefs and strategies behind the practice of advocacy across a spectrum of causes. The contributors come from varying backgrounds and include academics, artists, lawyers, journalists, non-profit and advocacy organisations, student and community organisers. They share practical insights into their aims and community-building work, and the tactics they employ to overcome obstacles, shedding light on how to navigate a city-state with shifting socio-political fault lines and out-of-bound markers.

With an introduction, “It is Time to Trim the Banyan Tree”, by Constance Singam, and a conclusion, “Their Struggle is Ours to Continue”, by Suraendher Kumarr.

Ethos Books has also partnered with the Community for Advocacy and Political Education (CAPE) to produce The CAPE Handbook to Advocacy in Singapore. Authored by CAPE and produced by Ethos Books, this concise guide dispels misconceptions and offers practical action steps, easing readers into strategies for effective advocacy and activism in the city-state.

Contributors: Alex Au, Alfian Sa’at, The Community for Advocacy and Political Education (CAPE), Cherian George, Corinna Lim, Disabled People’s Association, Irie Aman, Kenneth Paul Tan, Kirsten Han, Ng Kok Hoe, Pink Dot, Reetaza Chatterjee, Remy Choo, SG Climate Rally, Suraendher Kumarr, Thirunalan Sasitharan, Walid Jumblatt Bin Abdullah

We Saw Mountains gathers nine stories of human and non-human daring, where quotidian life is cracked open to possibilities of autonomy and re-imagination. A teen’s part-time job tests his integrity, a grieving elephant finds a new home by way of a contested river, and on an island a mountain appears, fully formed.

Through these visionary tales, Diana Rahim—whose stories have been featured in Best New Singaporean Short Stories and The Best of World SF—asks, can we do things differently? Can we imagine a different kind of life?

Step into this spellbinding collection and witness transformations both cosmic and everyday. Journey from the desert to the oasis, from drought to bloom, and return to our world with a rekindled faith in the possibility of becoming.

If you’ve ever wondered why people keep talking about Palestine, or the point of keeping up with a long-drawn conflict in the Middle East and what difference you could possibly make, this book is for you. Political analyst and podcaster Walid Jumblatt Abdullah takes on questions that Singaporeans have often raised about Palestine, laying out answers that clarify and inform. 

Walid examines myths (“Could Gaza Have Been Singapore?”) and sheds light on the double standards of Western powers, to whom human rights seem to matter, except for where Palestine is concerned. Explaining how the Palestinians have been systematically dehumanised for decades, the book highlights how they continue to exist nevertheless, their very existence an act of resistance. 

Why Palestine? is an illuminating starting point for newcomers to the issue, and a passionate primer that seasoned activists will welcome for capturing the heart and hope of a long-disenfranchised people and those who support them.