Jeremy Tiang, a Singaporean author of speculative fiction and literary nonfiction, was awarded the best English translation award for Zhang Yueran’s Cocoon (2022). This novel explores two childhood friends as they uncover dark family secrets during China’s Cultural Revolution period. Tharman Shanmugaratnam hosted an awards ceremony for this biennial competition that began back in 1992 to recognize outstanding published works across four official languages of Singapore: Chinese, English, Malay and Tamil.
The winning entries were determined to provide special insights into Singapore’s past, while inspiring future generations to connect with Singapore’s rich history. The judges found themselves “moved and touched” by stories in submissions – for the first time they even bestowed special commendations upon both book-based and online entries!
An anonymous donor recently doubled the prize money and encouraged the creation of a new category: NUS History Prize will be offered beginning in 2025 to both multimedia historical works as well as books. Each six years it will alternate between Arts & Multimedia Category and Book Category as part of this prize cycle.
This year’s competition also received entries from students. Joey Chua from Nanyang Girls’ High School won the Judges’ Prize with her entry “Sink”, impressing judges with her extensive research and vivid artistic interpretation. Joey won SGD 1,400 and her school received SGD 3,500 as prize awards.
Chloe Chua Yu Xuan from School of the Arts Singapore won the Public Vote Prize with her work Past/Present Tense, chosen by both visitors to the exhibition and online voters. Judges were impressed with its clarity and depth of understanding the past.
Daryl Goh, an art consultant and SAF trustee; Howard Bilton (co-founder and chairman); and Sweta Jha (founder of an SAF subsidiary that promotes Madhubani art). They were further guided by feedback from donors as well as those attending the exhibition.
On Tuesday, 7 November at Mediacorp Campus in Singapore, winners were revealed at a public event hosted by Temasek Trust, GenZero, Conservation International and Accion Andina as well as other partners such as GRST and WildAid Marine Program. For more information about their winners and entries click here.