Bugis street: The novel

by Koh Buck Song

A world famouse street is about to be demolished. An architect falls in love with a hawker. A star transvestite longs for a new life in a new body. The Novel is a story of fate. Told in turn in the individual voices of several characters, the novel relives the last days of a street, once the life of Singapore after dark, as it dies into memoryl.

Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Koh Buck Song born 1963, has an MA in English from Cambridge University, UK. He went to Harvard University in the United States in 2003, to do a Master in Public Administration degree as a Mason Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government. This is his sixt book. His poems have been featured in publications and on Singapore TV and radio, and also at the National Museum and the Esplanade- Theatres on the Bay arts centre.

(Excerpt from The Ocean of Ambition)

Reviews

[Eunice Ying Ci · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic and dramatic narrative that revolves around 1980s Bugis Street - from gangsters, prostitution, colonial hangovers, transvestism - this novel is really about transformation - of bodies, of physical landscapes, of circumstance, of a national consciousness. Adapted from a musical of the same name, the writing does demonstrate vibrancy, attention to sensory detail, and visual richness that recall the theatricality, spectacle, glamour, and musicality of a stage production. An industrious, fabulous, yet ill-fated Bugis Street drag queen, a one dimensional scumbag gambler and swindler, an insufferable, self-satisfied misogynist and bigot, these are some of the characters you will meet in Koh Buck Song’s Bugis Street, and while they are consumed quite stereotypically by the salient traits Koh wishes to emphasise, they continue to remain convincing, truthful, and vivid. Koh’s portrait of Bugis Street is historically significant, culturally invaluable, and puts forth many unconsidered challenges regarding our country’s relationship with liberalism, unaddressed crime, gender politics, and the relentlessly profit-oriented, progress-driven censorship and sanitisation that we are taught to refer to as redevelopment.