This year’s shortlist for the Singapore Prize – National University of Singapore’s (NUS) first history award – puts ordinary Singaporeans centre stage. Academic tomes remain on the list, as do works with an intimate focus that challenge traditional understandings of history as simply chronicles of big movers and shakers, say authors. Kamaladevi Aravindan’s Sembawang (2020; available here) chronicles life within an estate over time.
Nominating committee for the prize narrowed its selection down to 31 books for consideration, drawing inspiration from Kishore Mahbubani of NUS Asia Research Institute who first suggested it in a Straits Times column as being crucial to nations being imagined communities with shared histories that unite them all. When awarded in 2024, this prize will honour an author whose work best illuminates this history and contributes to Singaporeans understanding themselves better.
Novelists Myle Yan Tay and Suchen Christine Lim were shortlisted for their debut novels catskull (2023) and Dearest Intimate (2022). Lim received the Cultural Medallion Award in 1992 when her third novel Fistful Of Colours won her this prize; poet Edwin Thumboo was nominated with his poetic collection, The Lies That Built A Marriage (1993).
In the non-fiction category, Jeremy Tiang’s Chinese-language translation of Zhang Yueran’s Cocoon (2022) won the English comic or graphic novel award. Cockman (2022), featuring an alien chicken who finds itself trapped on Earth as human form, was shortlisted and “deserves to be read for its total lack of compromise or seriousness” when depicting alienation.
NUS Press professor Peter Borschberg published The Rise and Fall Of An Empire: The Dutch In Indonesia (2017, available here). Other noteworthy works in non-fiction included historian Kwa Chong Guan’s Seven Hundred Years: A History of Singapore (2019; also available online here), Joshua Wong from NUS alumnus Joshua Wong’s biography of founding father Lee Kuan Yew by NUS alumni Joshua Wong as well as Tan Boon Hui’s memoir (both listed above).
NUS Press will produce a limited-edition signed and numbered edition of the winning book for distribution; other shortlisted titles will also be sold at major bookstores across Singapore.
Consumers can cast their vote and select their top works here, with readers earning book vouchers worth up to SG$50 when selecting their favorites in each category.
On Tuesday in Singapore, Earthshot prizes winners were revealed at their inaugural award ceremonies and will offer solutions in areas including nature protection, clean air pollution control, ocean revitalization and waste elimination. Celebrities attending included Oscar winner Cate Blanchett, actors Donnie Yen and Lana Condor as well as Australian wildlife conservationist Robert Irwin – five winners were selected out of 15 finalist projects which tackle climate change issues, food waste reduction or animal welfare concerns.