Singapore
I read The Ministry of Moral Panic largely in the quiet margins of travel — in our hotel room and on the long flight from New Zealand, suspended somewhere between time zones. It felt fitting to encounter these stories in private spaces. Much of the collection turns on the tension between public order and private life, between what is regulated and what quietly resists.
Amanda Lee Koe’s stories move across Chinese, Malay, and Indian communities; across class, age, gender and sexuality. Men and women, queer and straight, young and old — each voice distinct. The range gives a textured sense of living in Singapore that no tourist overview could offer. These are not skyline stories. They are interior ones.
The title suggests something overtly political, even satirical. Yet many of the stories feel intensely personal and domestic. The “moral panic” is rarely theatrical. Instead, it hums in the background — in questions of reputation, control, conformity, and the subtle pressures exerted by the state and by society. The Singapore of these stories is ordered and efficient, but also watchful. The tension between regulation and individuality is constant, though often quietly rendered.
I particularly appreciated that Koe makes no attempt to weave the stories together into a neat tapestry. They stand entirely on their own. There is no artificial cohesion, no recurring device binding them for effect. That independence made the collection especially well suited to travel reading. Jet lag has a way of fracturing attention; these stories accommodated that state. I could dip in and out without losing momentum, each narrative complete in itself.
What lingers most is the multiplicity. The sense that beneath Singapore’s polished exterior lies a dense layering of private negotiations — of identity, of desire, of belonging. Reading the book did not radically alter the city I saw outside our hotel window, but it deepened it. The clean lines and manicured efficiency felt less singular, more complicated.
Rating: ★★★★★
The Peterson Odyssey 