SINGAPORE – In this week’s Singapore Shelf, The Straits Times looks at seven books fresh off the press in both fiction and non-fiction. Buy the books at Amazon. These articles include affiliate links. When you buy through them, we may earn a small commission.

Book review: Red Dust, White Snow struggles to balance philosophy and accessibility

Red Dust, White Snow features a lightly sci-fi setting of Singapore at an undisclosed point in the future. Its philosophical musings and writing style can both attract or repel readers.

Singaporean author Pan Huiting questions the meaning of dreams and reality in her debut novel, a different venture from her usual artistic medium of paintings. Her work has been exhibited in Singapore and London.

The narrative follows an unnamed female character who seems to be more an empty vessel for ideas than a fully fledged person.

Her monotonous routine is disrupted when a mysterious device appears and transports her to an alternate universe while she sleeps. The more time she spends there, the more the narrator has to decide what reality means to her.

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Poetry review: Madeleine Lee’s observations of Raffles Hotel and Ashley Koh’s skewering of teenage politics

After American travel writer Pico Iyer and New Zealand author Vicki Virtue, third time is the charm for Raffles Hotel’s writer’s residency programme as it welcomes its first Singaporean.

Madeleine Lee, 61, stayed at the hotel over several periods between October 2022 and May 2023, and completed her poetry collection How To Build A Lux Hotel in July.

The veteran author of 11 volumes of English poetry settles on the quiet and intimate in this project: Casual encounters and ...