An Award to Celebrate Singapore Spirit An idea mooted by a columnist in The Straits Times has come into fruition as The Singapore Prize, presented to any publication which makes an outstanding contribution to local history studies, is now in operation and offers S$50,000 as its reward. Established as part of Singapore’s 50th Anniversary of Independence celebrations, it is now administered by NUS Department of History.

Kishore Mahbubani, Director of NUS Asia Research Institute says: “Nobel laureate Benedict Anderson famously stated that nations are imagined communities; shared memories serve as glue between communities and that shared imagination helps societies remain cohesive. For this reason, it is imperative we remember and dream together of what Singapore might become in future years.”

On 20 September, Mediacorp Theatre hosted an award ceremony where approximately 200 guests were in attendance. Hosted by Prince of Wales – wearing green velvet suit with matching dickie bow – and Hannah Waddingham from The Hunger Games fame (she wore long black sparkling ball gown).

This year, the prize expanded its offerings with categories for best English creative non-fiction and three new fiction and translation categories to honour Singaporean writers and their works. Shubigi Rao’s Pulp III: An Intimate Inventory Of The Banished Book (2022) received its inaugural English comic or graphic novel award; described by its jury as an impressive feat of literary innovation that demonstrated total absence of compromise.

Prof Miksic’s work was selected because it provides the basis for a fundamental reinterpretation of Singapore history. Her argument draws on evidence such as references to Temasek and Longyamen in Chinese literary records dating back to 13th century China.

Kamaladevi Pillai’s Mahabharata of Singapore (2019), which examines how this epic poem influenced Singapore’s development, and Leluhur: Singapore’s Kampong Gelam (2019) by Hidayah Amin both explore how Gedung Kuning, a heritage royal building located within Kampong Gelam has played an instrumental role in Singapore. Pillai herself grew up here and currently runs a cafe there; according to Amin “the 1950s felt particularly exciting; when the country’s future seemed up for debate.”

This year, SSFA also introduced a Readers’ Favorite exercise where members of the public can vote online for their favourite shortlisted work to win an S$1,000 book voucher by 2 October. Voting ends this Friday.