The Singapore Prize is a biennial award that honours outstanding published works in Chinese, English and Malay. There are 12 top prizes of up to $10,000 each in the categories of fiction, non-fiction and poetry in each language.
This year marked a milestone for the prize: It gave its first woman the top prize for English poetry and added new categories for both Chinese and English translation and creative non-fiction. The winner in the fiction category was Marylyn Tan’s debut collection, Gaze Back, which is arcane and unapologetic in its tackle of taboo subjects from menstruation to sexuality. The non-fiction prize was awarded to National Institute of Education senior lecturer Anitha Ramachandran for her book Home Is Where We Are, which chronicles the legacy of a couple who created one of Asia’s most successful lotteries TOTO.
Britain’s Prince William joined Oscar winner Cate Blanchett, actors Donnie Yen and Lana Condor and Australian wildlife conservationist Robert Irwin for a gala awards ceremony Tuesday in Singapore. Celebrities walked the green carpet in line with sustainability themes, and William, who was wearing an old dark green blazer by British designer Alexander McQueen, said solutions presented by Earthshot finalists proved that “hope does remain” as climate change causes widespread destruction worldwide.
The prize is the brainchild of NUS Asia Research Institute distinguished fellow Kishore Mahbubani, who wrote in a Straits Times column last month that “a shared imagination, especially through history, is a critical glue holding nations together.” A panel he convened reviewed 31 books and selected five winners from five categories: nature protection, clean air, ocean revival, waste elimination and climate change.
Mahbubani said the winning works were important for their “unique and innovative approaches to their respective topics, and in each case they delved into the heart of an issue that will affect us all.” He added: “It is heartening that these works are receiving recognition not only in Singapore but across the globe.”
Winners in the translated fiction category included Hong Kong-based author Jeremy Tiang’s novel The Way We Were (2019), which explores the impact of globalisation on a family. In the non-fiction category, the prize went to artist Shubigi Rao’s Pulp III: An Intimate Inventory Of The Banished Book (2022), the third instalment of her decade-long project on banned books.
The organisers of the Singapore Prize said they were pleased to see a strong showing in this year’s shortlisting, with more than 20 works making the cut. They also praised the quality of this year’s nominees in both Chinese and English translation, with four of the seven shortlisted works written in Chinese and three in English.