The biennial Singapore prize is awarded to non-fiction work that explores the nation’s history. It aims to stimulate engagement with Singapore’s history broadly understood (including pre-1819) and encourages discussion on the country’s place in the world. The NUS Department of History launched the prize in 2014 with a contribution from a private philanthropist. It is also meant to make the complexities and nuances of Singapore’s history more accessible to non-academic audiences.

This year’s winner, a book about Kampong Gelam, the 14th century port of Singapore, was written by archaeologist John Miksic. The prize jury said his work is “fundamentally reinterprets the way in which we think about our own past” and that it is a crucial contribution to the field of Singapore studies.

Other books on the shortlist this year range from an examination of an iconic Indian poet’s life to histories about Malaysian migrants in Singapore and the life of a neighbourhood estate over five decades. They eschew the notion of history as a record of big movers and shakers and seek to present historical events through layperson’s eyes.

A short story collection by an Indian-origin lecturer in NTU’s creative writing program also made the list. Prasanthi Ram’s stories follow generations of a Tamil Brahmin family dispersed between Singapore, Sydney and New York. The prize is open to writers in all four of Singapore’s languages.

The top three works will be announced in early 2024. The public will also have a chance to vote in a consumer choice category, with two of the four winners to be given cash prizes worth 1,000 Singapore dollars (US$719) and book-purchase vouchers worth 50 SGD each.

This year’s theme, resonance, is designed to bring attention to the ways in which works of literature can inspire emotions and memory, and spark a greater understanding of Singapore’s unique culture. Besides the traditional categories, this year’s Singapore prize will also award multimedia works, such as films and comics.

The winners of the Singapore prize will receive their awards from President Tharman Shanmugaratnam at a ceremony in June. A separate prize will be awarded to a social innovation, the Earthshot Prize, a partnership between the NUS Business School and the Earth Institute. The finalists are an Indian maker of solar-powered dryers, a soil carbon marketplace and groups that restore Andean forests and deter illegal fishing.

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