The Invisible Manuscript | AFTERIMAGE Book Launch

A reading cum (re)launch. Read into it. The Invisible Manuscript returns to circulation as part of AFTERIMAGE’s RENDITIONS series. For its return, join Alfian Sa’at for a reading and conversation moderated by Pooja Nansi. Together, they will revisit the making and early circulation of The Invisible Manuscript, and explore the intimacies and desires held within its pages. More than a decade after its last publication, The Invisible Manuscript remains an uncompromising contribution from one of Singapore’s most outspoken literary voices. Event details 📍 Woods in the Books, 206 E Coast Rd, Singapore 428905 📅 Saturday, 3 October 2026 ⏰ 5–6pm About the collection Last published in 2012, AFTERIMAGE is proud to restore to circulation Alfian Sa’at’s The Invisible Manuscript as part of its RENDITIONS series, committed to preserving and reintroducing culturally defining works. Composed at the age of 22, Alfian Sa’at’s The Invisible Manuscript was first distributed to close confidantes and trusted colleagues via e-mails, messages and other unofficial channels. It bore passionate testimony to private and public memories, and documented the intimate challenges of longing, giving voice to an invisible minority that had struggled for recognition, and had yearned, desperately, for expression. Now: this gathering of poems and provocative texts demands ever more to be read. Full of fierce confessions, ambivalences and flinty epiphanies, The Invisible Manuscript is a timeless contribution from one of Singapore’s most outspoken and critical voices. Here is an uncompromising confluence of unfulfilled desires, wrought through language by a firebrand unlike any other. About the author Alfian Sa’at is a Resident Playwright with Wild Rice. He has won Best Original Script at the Life! Theatre Awards four times, in 2004 for Landmarks, in 2010 for Nadirah, in 2013 for Kakak Kau Punya Laki (Your Sister's Husband) and in 2016 for Hotel (with Marcia Vanderstraaten). In 2001, Alfian won the Golden Point Award for Poetry as well as the National Arts Council Young Artist Award for Literature. He has also been nominated for the Singapore Literature Prize three times, for Corridor (1999, Commendation Prize), A History of Amnesia (2004) and his translation of the novel The Widower (2016).