A Field Guide to Supermarkets in Singapore

Last published in 2016, AFTERIMAGE is proud to restore to circulation Samuel Lee’s A Field Guide to Supermarkets as part of its RENDITIONS series, committed to preserving and reintroducing culturally defining works.

A Field Guide to Supermarkets in Singapore is a 19th century reference book (on philology? art history? anthropology? nobody remembers) that fell into a tropical swamp and was rescued, then lovingly restored, by a nice lady in curlers.

Caked in organic matter too dense to scrub off, the pages of Samuel Lee's debut collection reveal visions and premonitions of a city filled with characters engaged in their own private sorrows, both minute and expansive. To read him is to be lost in the aisles of millennia.