The Books Your Favourite Writers Want You to Read

The 29th edition of the Singapore Writers Festival (SWF) is upon us. And while we’ve put together a guide to help you navigate the programme, there’s another way to get into the literary spirit, even if you’re not planning to attend: pick up a new book (or three).

We’ve asked some of the authors appearing at this year’s festival to share their reading recommendations, and who knows, your next favourite read might just be on this list.

Daryl Qilin Yam

Queer intimacy, complicated relationships and the occasional existential crisis are familiar territory for Singaporean writer Daryl Qilin Yam. His fiction often finds the extraordinary in the messiness of everyday life, from his debut novel Kappa Quartet (2016) to Lovelier, Lonelier (2021) and his more recent short story collection Be Your Own Bae (2024), which was shortlisted for the 2025 Singapore Book Awards. Outside of writing, Yam is also the co-founder of literary non-profit Sing Lit Station and a recipient of the 2025 Young Artist Award.

Beijing Sprawl by Xu Zechen, trans. Jeremy Tiang and Eric Abrahamsen

“I picked Beijing Sprawl simply because have full and complete trust in whatever Jeremy Tiang chooses to do with his pen, and I’m recommending it wholeheartedly because the zany cast of characters zig when you expect them to zag while making merry and mayhem across the city. Sure, their suffering is cyclical, but so what? You can’t help but wish you had a fraction of their spirit. I have a deep complex re: my connection to the motherland, but it is books like this exact one that really get my blood pumping and start looking out at the cityscape (with a beer! and a sigh!) from the nearest rooftop I can access.”

The Mystical Mister Kay by Meihan Boey

“Few books get me on my knees these days, but here’s an equivalent feeling: me, on reservist training (but also on my bunk bed) in the middle of godforsaken Wallaby, racing through the pages of this epic, the closest thing to a trilogy that few other writers in this country have ever pulled off.

You wanna talk cozy? You wanna talk fashion? You wanna talk transnational and transcultural? We need to give this woman her flowers for the sheer breadth of her imagination, and for her ability to draw satisfying connections (and conclusions!) like few others can.”

everything you carry is prayer by Qamar Firdaus Saini

“Yes, yes, call me biased cos I published this fella. Do it! But here’s my sales pitch anyway: I love Qamar’s poems because he wears his heart on his sleeve while keeping his gaze upon the cosmos. He’s in between the sheets with his wife-to-be while paying homage to quiet mornings spent with his mother. He’s in that curious valley between two faiths while also knowing that all roads, ultimately, lead to the ocean. That and, if you look up some of the songs he hints at across the collection, you’ll get a rocking good time.”

Myle Yan Tay

Singapore doesn’t always make for the most convincing setting for a vigilante thriller, but Myle Yan Tay’s debut novel catskull (2023) pulls it off rather spectacularly. Following a teenager who takes justice into his own hands, the book turns the familiar city into a simmering, comic-book-like landscape, earning Tay both Book of the Year and Best Literary Work at the 2024 Singapore Book Awards. A writer of plays, prose, essays and comics, Tay is also an Associate Artist at Checkpoint Theatre and co-host of Comic Sans, a podcast about comics.

Old Soul by Susan Barker

“Throughout my time reading Old Soul, I found myself constantly looking over my shoulder, imagining phantoms in shadows. This strange and sinister story is told through a series of connected vignettes and is perfect for anyone who prefers their horror more literary. But you might be wary of polaroid pictures for a while after.”

One Day When It’s Safe, Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This by Omar El Akkad

“The most persuasive and emotionally potent work of non-fiction I’ve read in recent memory. El Akkad astutely articulates the moral crisis that may define our lifetimes (the world’s response to the devastation in Gaza) and the resolve it demands of us. This is not a light read, but you will find yourself thinking about it long after you’re done.”

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

“This for me is science fiction at its best. It’s both a formally-challenging page-turner and a deeply anthropological work, concerned with the nature of society (human or otherwise). The only caveat I have is that arachnophobes might want to think twice, but I’ll also say: I never thought I could sympathise this much with a spider.”

Rachel Smythe

What if the Greek gods had Instagram, relationship drama and a penchant for office gossip? That’s the world New Zealand cartoonist Rachel Smythe built with Lore Olympus, her modern, romantic retelling of the myth of Hades and Persephone. First published on WEBTOON in 2018, the series has since become a global phenomenon, winning three consecutive Eisner Awards for Best Webcomic between 2022 and 2024, and spawning a bestselling graphic novel series.

Blood Over Bright Haven by M. L. Wang. 

“This story (which follows Sciona, the first woman admitted into the high mages’ guild of a city powered by magic, who begins to uncover the brutal human cost behind its prosperity) had me crying in the first damn chapter. The way M.L. Wang is able to make you care about characters that you barely know is incredible. It’s a standalone fantasy novel that I think should be rubbing shoulders with The Handmaid’s Tale and Brave New World.”  

The Wedding People by Alison Espach

“You can’t have a feast without both sweet and salty. (A recently divorced woman checks into a hotel intending to end her life, only to find herself caught up in a stranger’s wedding weekend.) Espach understands levity and uses it expertly. Great to laugh, cry and everything in between. If you ever need to feel hopeful, this is the kind of read that will renew your faith in people.”

The Odyssey by Homer 

“I’m so sorry to be completely predictable, but I have to say The Odyssey. However, it must be the version with Emily Wilson’s translation. There are many translations of Homer’s epic out there, but Wilson’s edition includes an introduction that goes into great detail about her translation process. The thing about translating a work like The Odyssey is that it’s not just about translating the words, but also the context behind them.”

Wen-Yi Lee

Wen-Yi Lee has a particular fondness for girls with bite, feral nature and ghosts. The Singaporean writer’s work moves between horror and speculative fiction, often bringing troubled women and buried histories to the fore. Her adult fantasy debut, When They Burned the Butterfly (2025), follows a girl gang navigating the Chinese secret societies of postcolonial Singapore, while her YA horror novel The Dark We Know (2024) explores grief, friendship and the monsters that refuse to stay buried.

Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel

“Emily St John Mandel’s sci-fi world connects vastly separated times and lives with such intimacy. Station Eleven has stuck with me since I read it many years ago. I call it tender post-apocalyptia, in that it focuses on the ways art and the human spirit persevere after a plague that ends the world. (This was written before Covid-19.)

Beauty persists. Nature heals. Stories outlive us, as does our human desire to tell them. Art forms our collective memory and gives us our own mythologies. Good communities can form again, perhaps even rebuild a better world. I find that vision incredibly hopeful at a time when the state of both humanity and art feels bleak.”

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield

“Grief is strange and distorting and feels like being submerged, and Julia Armfield captures all of that in this quiet, watery, body-horror-inflected, beautifully written love story about aftermaths and learning to let go. A woman’s marine biologist wife inexplicably returns from a fatal submarine incident, only to slowly slip away into something unrecognisable. When I think of processing grief, this is one mental world I return to.”

Is A River Alive? by Robert MacFarlane

“At a time when pessimism about the future is rife and the climate crisis feels increasingly urgent, this book has restored some of my sense of wonder. More than that, it reminds me that our love for the natural world can be a powerful impetus for political action to protect it.

Part personal nature writing, part reporting on environmental activism, the book follows local communities fighting to protect endangered rivers in different countries. With Singapore recently announcing plans that will see more forests and islands developed, this feels like a timely reminder that we cannot thrive without protecting the land and waters that sustain us.”