Support local bookstores this pandemic quarantine period. They are a treasure to local communities and they need your help more than ever.
Iconic Singapore bookshop Bookactually‘s physical store may be temporarily closed, but let’s continue to support them and their three crazy feline deities online.
Things are not looking very bright for the world right now. The daily cycle of bad news and the challenges of being locked away wear out both our bodies and souls. It is precisely at this time that we need to remember that books can offer a great degree of comfort through the welcome distraction of entertainment, and more importantly, through their accumulated knowledge and wisdom.
Moreover, they also offer hope through dark days. Hope that whatever problems facing us in life, there is a book somewhere that will help deal with it. Until the world reaches a new normal, let’s all ride out this difficult period with a book in hand (or two, or ten).
On that note I am pleased to announce that Math Paper Press has made a second impression of my first collection of short stories, The Infinite Library and Other Stories.
Copies of the first printing ran out shortly before the 2019 Singapore Writers Festival and the few paperbacks floating around were going for an astonishing USD$35 (SGD$49) each. I am happy to note that you can now buy a brand new copy at the BooksActuallyShop for much less, at only USD$13.35 (SGD$19). If you buy 3 other books, the three cats who run the store, Cake, Pico and Lemon (and their human assistant Kenny Leck) will provide free shipping in Singapore.
Shortlisted for both the United Kingdom’s 2018 International Rubery Book Award for the best books by independent writers, self-published authors, and books published by independent presses, and by the Asian Books Blog for the 2017 Book of the Lunar Year Award.
“Lovingly spun and told with a keen eye on familial relationships, as well as the inexorable desires of humankind, these stories signal that Ocampo may well be becoming the gold standard in South-east Asian speculative fiction.” – Clara Chow, book review in the Singapore Straits Times.
“Fundamentally, The Infinite Library and Other Stories is a book about possibility, limitation, and the boundary between them. In imagining alternative possibilities and stretching them to the point of snapping, Victor Fernando Ocampo engages in an act of profound political importance, aesthetic significance, and philosophical rigor that is a serious pleasure to ingest.” – Deven Philbrick, prose editor for the Seattle Review writing for Singapore Unbound
“The ideas that power this collection are not just incredibly imaginative, they also weave a hybrid crossing through magical realism, allegory and science fiction, that ‘synchronicity’ Ocampo mentions in one of his stories.” – Elaine Chew, interview at the Asian Books Blog
The Infinite Library and Other Stories 