Neverness

By Fairoz Ahmad

A poignant coming-of-age historical novel that captures what it might have felt like to live in Engku Aman, for which there is little formal historical accounting. 

Format: Paperback
Pages: 232

- 

There are obscure emotions that reside in every one of us, where language cannot reach, because its waters are too deep. A lot was going on in 1979. Most Malay villages were long gone or in their dying days. Malay rock began its unstoppable rise with the emergence of its first influential rock band, while drugs were just across the street. And on one Friday night that year, during the final months in the life of the once major Malay village of Engku Aman in Geylang Serai, 15-year-old Alia left her house and vanished without a trace. In the aftermath of her disappearance, the protective layers in the lives of three other young people who knew her begin unpeeling as they struggle to make sense of her disappearance and their lives in a period of immense social and cultural change.

While there are many historical novels in Sing Lit that centre the Chinese Singaporean experience, Neverness centres the Malay experience and immerses readers in the heyday of Malay rock.

About the Author

Fairoz Ahmad works at the intersection of strategy and social impact. For his contributions to community development, he was awarded the National University of Singapore's Outstanding Young Alumni Award (2017) and United Kingdom's Commonwealth Point of Light Award (2018). 

His previous work, a collection of short stories called Interpreter of Winds, was published by Ethos Books in 2019. The book was a reflection of his experiences and observations growing up Muslim in a world too busy, too distracted, to understand one another.

Fairoz graduated from the University of Oxford with a Master of Public Policy (Distinction), under a Chevening scholarship.