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Bestseller at Gerakbudaya Bookshop for Sep 2018
This final double-sized issue of LONTAR presents speculative writing from and about Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Korea and Vietnam.
Inside these pages, you’ll find:
- sightings of a strange astronaut in an infinite library by Victor Fernando R. Ocampo, illustrated by Eisner winner Sonny Liew;
- the meeting between weretigers and Sang Nila Utama by Manish Melwani;
- the enlightenment of a politician’s wife by Cyril Wong;
- a Pygmalion-esque tragic romance by comic artist Drewscape;
- weaponised merlions in WWII-era Singapore by Kevin Martens Wong;
- an unexpected offer of omniscient immortality by Eliza Victoria;
- gods and mango tree spirits united in song by Vida Cruz;
- post-apocalyptic satay cookery in Marina Bay Sands by Wayne Rée;
- domestic strife and changeling tigers by Natalie Wang;
- the magic of folding origami cranes by Topaz Winters;
- a panadería that guarantees pregnancy by Gabriela Lee;
- surrogate speaking to the dead by Patricia Karunungan;
- a dating app for interdimensional monstrosities by Marylyn Tan & Graeme Ford;
- and speculative poetry by Kevin Minh Allen, Davian Aw, F. Jordan Carnice, May Chong, Genevieve DeGuzman, Lawdenmarc Decamora, Joses Ho, Judith Huang, Sithuraj Ponraj, Bronwyn Sharman, Lakan Umali and Natalie Wang.
Also included is a special supplement: the exciting conclusion of Dean Francis Alfar’s brilliant novel Salamanca, winner of the Palanca Award Grand Prize for the Novel and the Gintong Aklat Award for Literature.
Serial
Salamanca – Part Three
Dean Francis Alfar
Fiction
Sejarah Larangan; or, The Forbidden History of Old Singapura
Manish Melwani
Flight
Topaz Winters
A Merlion for His Majesty
Kevin Martens Wong
The Offering
Gabriela Lee
Toader
Marylyn Tan & Graeme Ford
Satay
Wayne Rée
The Filial Tiger’s Wife
Natalie Wang
To See Infinity Inside the Pages of a Book
Victor Fernando R. Ocampo
Sonny Liew (illustrator)
Song of the Mango
Vida Cruz
Agatha
Patricia Karunungan
The Bodhisattva Makes Her Case
Cyril Wong
Carpe Noctem
Eliza Victoria
Poetry
The Pontianak
Stranger Tales from the Nanyang
Natalie Wang
Outskirts
According to Our Wishes
Kevin Minh Allen
Space Ship Island Number One
Truce
Joses Ho
Dynasty
Lawdenmarc Decamora
Ants
A different story
Judith Huang
Lex Talionis
Sithuraj Ponraj
On the Evening an Autocrat Experienced Synaesthesia
F. Jordan Carnice
Liberation
Home
Afterglow
Davian Aw
Tuan Puteri Mayang
Cosmos Amok
May Chong
Iterative Translations from the Output Layer
Bronwyn Sharman
Cosmonaut’s Lament
Genevieve DeGuzman
Mara’s Mother Introduces the World
Mara’s Mother Warns Her of the Outside
Lakan Umali
Sequential Art
Rewire
Drewscape
Extract from “A Merlion for His Majesty”
They blink.
He feels what it feels. The ocean. The songs. The food. The cold. The cold that is not cold, just like the invasion that is not an invasion, permeating the smooth, slippery folds of his brain and taking up permanent residence in the reefs and caves of his mind.
It knows what he knows. The beatings. The executions. The desires. The quiet that is not quiet, a silence that is not silence, but a searing defiance, a hatred that courses silent and red through the rushing waters of the boy’s veins.
They blink again, and they are one. The cold and the silence. The ocean and the wavering flame.
The anthropozoologist nods, and the boy’s father unfolds his arms. The boy and the creature watch him impassively.
“How do you feel?” says King Mansour.
“Extended,” says Haidar, as the anthropozoologist pulls the needles from his arm.
LONTAR 