MARSEILLE, France (Reuters) – Kiteboarder Max Maeder could win more than Olympic Gold this week — he may also claim a one million Singapore dollar ($753,579) payout. The island city state’s Major Games Award Programme offers cash rewards to athletes who medal at the Olympic, Asian and Commonwealth Games and South East Asian Games. So far, swimmer Joseph Schooling is the only Singaporean to have won an Olympic gold medal.
In the English category, former Straits Times journalist Akshita Nanda’s debut novel Nimita’s Place, about two women named Nimita navigating society’s expectations in India and Singapore, was awarded for its “sharply observant and empathetic treatment of its characters.” Epigram Books’ speculative short story collection Lion City also won in this category, while 91-year-old academic Peter Ellinger took the honours for Down Memory Lane: A Life in Asia (1923). The prize’s Jury Panel, chaired by Kishore Mahbubani, Distinguished Fellow at the NUS Asia Research Institute, chose a total of 17 writers, translators and comic artists from four languages to be given the Singapore Prize.
Each of the winners will receive $3,000, a trophy and a 12-month Storytel audiobook gift subscription. The Jury also selected two highly commended works: Reviving Qixi: Singapore’s Forgotten Seven Sisters Festival by Lynn Wong Yuqing and Lee Kok Leong, and Theatres of Memory: Industrial Heritage of 20th Century Singapore by Loh Kah Seng, Alex Tan Tiong Hee, Koh Keng We, and Juria Toramae.
The inaugural English non-fiction prize was awarded to the memoir Down Memory Lane: A Life in Asia by 91-year-old NUS professor Peter Ellinger, who was lauded for his “fascinating account of the changes in Singapore that have taken place over almost half a century.” The book was praised for its “extraordinary empathy and narrative skill”.
A total of 11 prizes were given out during the awards ceremony at Mediacorp Theatre, including the Harvard Prize Book which recognises pre-tertiary students who are deeply caring towards others. One such recipient, Muhammad Dinie from the Institute of Technical Education, College Central, shared about how he led his team in an appreciation project for Town Council cleaners during the pandemic.
The Singapore Prize is presented by the National Library Board of Singapore and funded by a grant from the Singapore Pools. It aims to encourage engagement with Singapore’s history broadly understood to include works that touch on Singapore’s place in the world and its people’s sense of identity and belonging. It also seeks to make the complexities and nuances of Singapore’s past more accessible to non-academic audiences. For more information, visit the website here.
