SINGAPORE — A slender volume that took 14 years to publish and weighs 3.2kg has won the triennial singapore prize, one of Singapore’s biggest literary awards. Khir Johari’s gastronomic tome, The Food of Singapore Malays: An Archipelago History (2019), beat five other shortlisted books to win the $50,000 prize money. It is the second time the book has won the prestigious award, which was established in 2014 to celebrate SG50.
The award was first mooted by NUS Asia Research Institute distinguished fellow Kishore Mahbubani in a Straits Times column, and won support from the Singapore government, with the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth providing seed funding. It has since grown into a global prize, awarded annually to organisations and individuals that work with young people. The winners are announced at a ceremony in Singapore, and each receives a cash prize and a trophy designed by architect Wong Wei-Han. The awards are organised by the Singapore Book Council and are backed by the National Library Board.
The prize aims to encourage young people in the region to be more informed and engaged citizens of their own countries, and to develop a sense of national identity amongst them. Each year, a shortlist is selected from nominations submitted by members of the public, and then a panel of judges selects a winner. The prizes are presented at the Asian Youth Awards ceremony in Singapore each November.
This year’s shortlist for the prize includes novels with a personal slant that forgo the view of history as a record of big movers and shakers. Jeremy Tiang’s shortlisted novel Sembawang (2020, available here) recounts life in his childhood home in Kampong Glam, while Hidayah Amin’s Leluhur: A Story of Singapore’s Kampong Gelam (2019, available here) illuminates the past of a neighbourhood that many now see as a tourist attraction.
NUS and a Finnish university have launched their first official cooperation in the field of science and technology. The partners are collaborating on a project to boost the careers of women in science, engineering and technology. The project, titled Female Champions of Innovation, is funded by the European Commission and will help identify and promote outstanding female role models in STEM.
In the 2024 edition of the singapore prize, the award’s best English translation prize went to Jeremy Tiang’s work with Chinese author Zhang Yueran’s Cocoon (2022). The book follows two childhood friends who try to put to bed dark secrets linking their families in the long shadow of the Cultural Revolution. The book won praise for its “total lack of seriousness and compromise, and over-the-top audacity and absurdity”. In the same category, self-published Cockman (2022) by Kenfoo won the inaugural best English comic or graphic novel prize for its “absolutely brilliantly outrageously offbeat take on human foibles and the inextricable link between the human and animal world”.