For the first time, this year’s singapore prize has crowned 12 winners in the category of fiction and non-fiction, across the island nation’s four languages. In addition, the award also offers a reader’s choice prize to a book which was highly popular among consumers.
The prize, which was established in 2014, seeks to encourage interest in Singapore’s history and culture, and promote greater discussion on the country’s place in the world. The prize was launched by the Department of History at NUS, and the first winner was the book Singapore and the Silk Road of the Sea, 1300-1800 by archaeologist John Miksic.
The NUS prize is open to any non-fiction work in English, Mandarin or Tamil on Singapore’s history and culture. This year, there were 31 works submitted for consideration by publishers. The shortlist features a range of titles, from novels to works with a more personal slant. For example, Leluhur: Singapore’s Kampong Gelam (2019, available here) by Hidayah Amin shines a light on the history of a neighbourhood that many now know only as a tourist attraction.
Another novel, State of Emergency (2017, available here), tells the story of a family through the political movements and detentions that rocked Singapore in the 1950s. The shortlist also includes Jeremy Tiang’s translation of Chinese author Zhang Yueran’s Cocoon (2022, available here), which follows two childhood friends as they put to bed dark secrets that link their families in the shadow of the Cultural Revolution.
Consumers voted for their favorite books in the reader’s choice category, and the results will be announced on Oct 29. More than 4,000 people participated, which is twice the number who voted in this round of consumer voting for the 2021 award. The four winning books will be honoured at a ceremony at the National Library of Singapore, hosted by President Tharman Shanmugaratnam.
Kishore Mahbubani, NUS Asia Research Institute distinguished fellow and former editor of The Straits Times, mooted the idea for the prize in a newspaper column in April 2014. He said that nations are “imagined communities” and a shared imagination, particularly in history, is a critical glue holding them together.
Mahbubani was part of the panel that decided on this year’s winner, and he says there could be plans to broaden the scope of the prize in future. He cited movies like 12 Years a Slave as an example of how history can sometimes be more effective in telling a story than a dry textbook, and he added that the panel may consider expanding the type of works that qualify for the prize to include fictional works, films and comics as well as written ones.