The Singapore prize is a biennial award for the best work of non-fiction in English, Mandarin or Tamil on Singapore’s history and culture. The prize, established in 2014, is administered by the Department of History at NUS and aims to spur interest in Singapore’s unique history and culture amongst non-academic audiences and encourage greater discussion about the nation’s place in the world.
The shortlist for the prize includes several historical tomes that look at major events, as well as works with a more personal slant. These include Sembawang (2020, available here) by Kamaladevi Aravindan, a novel that tells the story of her extended family as they lived through the leftist political movement and detentions of the 1950s. Jeremy Tiang’s non-fiction Leluhur: Singapore’s Kampong Gelam (2019, available here) is another book that forgoes the usual view of history as the record of big movers and shakers.
Prof Kishore Mahbubani, dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, had written a column in April about the lack of books on Singapore’s history when an anonymous donor stepped forward to offer funding for the prize. He said he was moved by the number of readers who responded to his plea for a cash prize to be devoted to the study of Singapore’s past.
This year’s shortlist has six books that are up for the prize, including an academic book on the history of the infamous Fort Canning Hill. Other books are about a man who fought for the rights of women, a pioneer in the pharmaceutical industry and the evolution of Singapore’s cultural scene.
A panel of judges will decide the winner, which will be announced on 25 September. The winner will receive a trophy and a monetary prize of S$50,000. The runner-up will receive S$25,000, and the other finalists will each get S$10,000. The winning work will also be published by NUS Press and featured on the prize website.
NUS Press has a long history of publishing high quality books in the fields of Asian studies, history and sociology. Its book catalogue, which currently numbers more than 600 titles, is one of the largest and most diverse in the region. Its authors and contributors are leading scholars in their respective disciplines from Asia, Europe, the Americas and Australia.
NUS Press is a member of the SAGE Publishing group. The SAGE Publishing group is a global, multi-disciplinary publisher of journals, books, ebooks and multimedia products. Its products span many different markets and subject areas, and its customers are individuals, researchers, corporate learners and libraries worldwide. SAGE is committed to building a sustainable business model and to promoting positive social change. To achieve this, it invests in its employees, partners with stakeholders and clients, and supports the communities in which it operates. This is reflected in its corporate governance policies and practices, and in the way it develops its authors, editors and readers. The group’s vision is to “empower people and organisations to thrive in a globalised and interconnected world”. This commitment to sustainability is embedded in its mission, strategy and values.