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Author:  Alvin Tan

Year: November 2019

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Summary:

Singapore: A Very Short History - From Temasek to tomorrow is a fresh,new, and highly-readable account of Singapore's history. It is a sweeping story of discovery, abandonment, rediscovery and development of what is today one of the world's greatest port-cities. Brief as this account may be, it incorporates all the latest research and findings about Singapore's past, and weaves a concise yet coherent and comprehensive account of the island over the last 700 years.

Beyond familiar foundational myths and stories, this new account weaves Singapore's story on a wide tapestry - through a cast of princes, sultans, colonial administrators, occupiers community leaders and politicians - and tells the tale of how they struggled to answer that all-important
question: How do we make this island succeed? Two recurrent themes emerge from this gripping account. First, that Singapore was an unlikely or accidental nation-state; and second, that given its vulnerability to wider regional and international forces, it survived and flourished only because it was able to constantly change and adapt to make itself useful and relevant to the world. And what of tomorrow? Will Singapore survive? This book is a hopeful response to these questions.

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Author:  Tommy Koh

Year: January 2020

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Summary:

The collection of 50 essays, written by leaders and experts in their fields, sheds light on how the small state has scored significant success in not only economics but also eight other areas.

Among other things, Singapore is one of the world’s least corrupt countries, has one of the highest home ownership rates worldwide — of more than 90 per cent — and has world-class schools, healthcare and environments.

Singapore has also been a good global citizen. It has played a significant role in the development of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). At the United Nations (UN), Singapore has played a leadership role in the negotiations of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the UN Convention on International Settlement Agreements Resulting from Mediation, also known as the Singapore Convention on Mediation, and the Rio Declaration on Environment and development.

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Author:  Wallpaper

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Summary:

'Wallpaper City Guides' are a ruthlessly-researched, design-conscious guide, for the discerning traveller who wants to come away with a true taste of the best a city has to offer.

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Author:  Neil Humphreys

Year: February 2004

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Summary:

Knowing nothing of Singapore, Neil Humphreys arrives in the land of 'air-conned' shopping centres and Lee Kuan Yew. From the aunties in the hawker centres to expats dressed as bananas, from Singlish to kiasuism, and from Singaporeans abroad, Humphreys explores all aspects of Singaporean life, taking in the sights, dissecting the culture and illuminating each place and person with this perceptive and witty observations. Written by someone who is at once both insider and outside, the book is a wonderfully funny and disarmingly honest portrait of Singapore and its people.

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Author:  Lee Wei Ling 

Year: January 2015

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Summary:

Dr Lee Wei Ling, scion of Singapore’s first family, writes about her life as a daughter, doctor and diehard Singaporean. This book addresses a range of matters affecting Singaporeans in a personal way. It reflects her personality, profession, relationships, passions and perspective of life, Singapore and the world, and her loved ones. The chapters are grouped thematically and are capped by an epilogue of six articles which encapsulate the two events that had a major impact on the writer, and resonated deeply with Singaporeans: the passing of her parents

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Singapore Book Award for Best Non-Fiction Title (2016)

Author:  Lai Chee Kien

Year: October 2015

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Summary:

In 2009, the family of the late Lee Kip Lin donated to the National Library Board, Singapore over 14,500 slides and negatives of modern Singapore that he had taken, among other items of historical merit such as maps, rare photographs and prints, and books. Over three decades from 1965 to 1995, Lee captured the many landscapes and buildings that would eventually disappear from the island and its shores. Close to 500 photographs have been reproduced in this book to showcase the exuberance and eloquence of the different built forms - in an era when time and space in Singapore was more accommodating.

Book description credit: Amazon

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"This collection takes apart the tropes trumpeted ad infinitum about Singapore - the Lion City, gone from fishing village to having great food and a world-class airport - and reveals the magic of myth that underpins them all. The stories, with their subtle explorations of colonialism, capitalism and alienation, are delightful and discomfiting in equal measure. [...] Ng shows not just keen awareness of the existing canons of genre, but a blithe faith that Singapore belongs in these canons. This clever, colourful collection certainly makes a good case for that."

—Olivia Ho, Straits Times

“Dazzlingly original, wickedly inventive.”

—Amanda Lee Koe, multi-award-winning author of Ministry of Moral Panic

Author:  Yi-Sheng Ng

Year: October 2018

Buy it here: Amazon, Epigram Books

Summary:

A man learns that all the animals at the Zoo are robots. A secret terminal in Changi Airport caters to the gods. A prince falls in love with a crocodile. A concubine is lost in time. The island of Singapore disappears.

These are the exquisitely strange tales of Lion City, the first collection of short fiction by award-winning poet and playwright Ng Yi-Sheng. Infused with myth, magical realism and contemporary sci-fi, each of these tales invites the reader to see this city-state in a new and darkly fabulous light.

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"A brilliant, complex, richly absurd and melancholy monument to the follies and splendours of Empire."

— Hilary Spurling

"[This] vivid, multi-dimensional portrait of Singapore…is a superbly constructed book, enjoyable on many different levels."

— The Sunday Times

Author:  J.G. Farrell

Year: February 2005

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Summary:

Singapore, 1939: life on the eve of World War II just isn't what it used to be for Walter Blackett, head of British Singapore's oldest and most powerful firm. No matter how forcefully the police break one strike, the natives go on strike somewhere else. His daughter keeps entangling herself with the most unsuitable beaus, while her intended match, the son of Blackett's partner, is an idealistic sympathizer with the League of Nations and a vegetarian. Business may be booming—what with the war in Europe, the Allies are desperate for rubber and helpless to resist Blackett's price-fixing and market manipulation—but something is wrong. No one suspects that the world of the British Empire, of fixed boundaries between classes and nations, is about to come to a terrible end.

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“This sweet coming-of-age story weaves the blush of first love amid the dangers of political intrigue. Rich with historical detail and rounded out by an entertaining cast of characters, it is sure to enthrall historical fiction fans.”

—Cortney Ophoff, Booklist

Author: Liz Rosenberg

Year: October 2014

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Summary:

Agnes Hussein, descendant of the last sultan of Singapore and the last surviving member of her immediate family, has grown up among her eccentric relatives in the crumbling Kampong Glam palace, a once-opulent relic given to her family in exchange for handing over Singapore to the British.

Now Agnes is seventeen and her family has fallen into genteel poverty, surviving on her grandfather’s pension and the meager income they receive from a varied cast of boarders. As outside forces conspire to steal the palace out from under them, Agnes struggles to save her family and finds bravery, love, and loyalty in the most unexpected places. 

The Moonlight Palace is a coming-of-age tale rich with historical detail and unforgettable characters set against the backdrop of dazzling 1920s Singapore.

Book description credit: Amazon

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“A hugely ambitious, stylistically acrobatic work….the book is a mercurial delight, constantly switching between Liew’s invented narrative (in a relatively neutral nonfiction style), images of Chan Hock Chye’s works in progress over the course of his career and mock-weathered clippings from his printed creations, most of which are immaculate pastiches of famous cartoonists.” 

—New York Times Book Review

“Brilliantly inventive….Charlie is mild but steel-spined, observant and proud; with masterful economy of detail—an arched eyebrow here, his head at a resigned angle there—Mr. Liew crafts him into a fully realised character.” 

—The Economist

Author: Sonny Liew 

Year: March 2016

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Summary:

Meet Charlie Chan Hock Chye.

Now in his early 70s, Chan has been making comics in his native Singapore since 1954, when he was a boy of 16. As he looks back on his career over five decades, we see his stories unfold before us in a dazzling array of art styles and forms, their development mirroring the evolution in the political and social landscape of his homeland and of the comic book medium itself. With The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye Sonny Liew has drawn together a myriad of genres to create a thoroughly ingenious and engaging work, where the line between truth and construct may sometimes be blurred, but where the story told is always enthralling, bringing us on a uniquely moving, funny, and thought-provoking journey through the life of an artist and the history of a nation.

Book description credit: Book depository