A gathering of emerging Singaporean writers across prose and poetry, offering a snapshot of a literary scene finding its groove.

The contributors rub, glide, shuffle, through the friction between private interiority and Singapore’s intensely managed public world. The prose ranges from the comic and abrasive to the dreamlike; the poetry is similarly varied. There's a gorgeous lack of coherent national “voice", and shows just how so many incompatible voices can occupy the same place.

Written over 20 years ago, it catches Singapore writing before many of the names, institutions and assumptions around contemporary Singaporean literature had settled into their current form. Pieces such as Sharon Koh’s acidic “Life in a Shitty Restaurant”, Keiv Teh Mingen’s more uncanny urban fiction and the poetry section give the collection the feeling of writers testing what could be said, and in what register, rather than presenting a polished cultural export.

The National Library Board of Singapore lists Capsule in its bibliography of Singapore literature anthologies and records it as a 2000 publication of 120 pages.

Edition / condition: Mojorag, Brookline, Massachusetts, 2000. First edition. Paperback. Light shelf wear and minor marking to covers; internally clean and sound. Very good condition.