By Rupal Vyas, Assistant Editor, Penguin Random House SEA
With freedom in the air and celebrations all around, we come together to celebrate the 57th National Day with our fellow readers. Seeing the nation grow from strength to strength has only brought in more compassion and hope; and has kept the spirit alive to move ahead #StrongerTogether. Bringing to you from our beloved shelves some exciting reads:
The Votive Pen: Writings on Edwin Thumboo
A rivetting look at the fiercely original, intellectually brilliant mind of Singapore’s unofficial Poet-Laureate, Edwin Thumboo. Born of Tamil and Teochew parents, he embraced the Protestant faith late in his life. He has a self-confessed fetish for Yeats and Pound and yet completed his doctoral thesis on post-colonial African poetry. He taught himself the Ramayana and I-Ching but found traces of the Odysseus in the shadows of the Merlion. He is brusquely vocal about poetry with a purpose and yet appears a hopeless romantic in his poems about his wife. What happens when a mind which is such a melting pot of brilliant ideas and contrary emotions tries to unscramble the identity of a country like Singapore which is complex, multiracial, has known a fierce economic growth that has often elbowed aside everything else?
The Votive Pen sets out to see Edwin Thumboo’s poetry – steadily and see it whole – without the intervening static of earlier critical writing and with an intense alertness to the text.
Beyond Storms and Stars – A Memoir
How did a young girl who rose from underprivileged circumstances in post-war Singapore become a trailblazer of women’s global leadership at the United Nations? Noeleen Heyzer was the first woman from outside North America to be appointed as Executive Director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and the first woman Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP). In these memoirs, Noeleen Heyzer reflects on her remarkable journey – from the challenges of her childhood and youth, her intellectual development at the University of Singapore and the University of Cambridge, to her groundbreaking work on women’s empowerment and her meteoric rise to the position of Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations. It is a book that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the courage of individuals, communities, and societies to transform structures of discrimination and injustice.
Softer Voices
Philip Montfort is a man of contradictions. He is an Anglo-Indian born in British India and torn between his Part-Caucasian heritage and his Indian identity. Born into a vanishing aristocratic family with fading fortunes, his life is a struggle to reconcile his circumstances with his desires and to render a true account of himself. He is irreligious but a seeker of truth and authenticity. After studying law at Cambridge, and being denied a place in both England and India, he seeks instead to make life anew in the Colonies – specifically in the bustling, ecstatic British outpost of Singapore.
There, he is drawn into the orbit of young, privileged intellectuals like himself who seek truth just as he does, while gorging and stupefying themselves with layers of luxury. They call themselves the Asiatic Club and commission themselves to doing civic works in the lead up to the War. More secretive however are their preparations to form a stay-behind auxiliary in the event that Singapore is occupied.
When War reaches Singapore in the early forties, the excess is stripped away and each member of this exclusive coterie is forced to confront their true selves as they make sacrifices and compromises of character. While fighting as a reserve officer in the British Indian Army’s III Corps, Philip is captured as a prisoner-of-war. Thereafter, he is convinced to join the Axis-collaborationist Indian National Army under its mercurial but brilliant leader, Subhas Chandra Bose.
Raffles Readers: A Century of Adventures
Raffles Hotel is the best known, oldest and most elegant hotel in Singapore. When it was first built in 1887, it stood on Beach Road, opposite the sea. Nowadays, Beach Road is in the middle of a thriving, modern city. There are many tales of weird and wonderful events at this beautiful hotel. And hundreds of famous people have stayed there. Here, in the Raffles Readers, you will meet some characters who maybe, just maybe, could have stayed in the hotel. Who knows?
Stories spanning from the 1920s to 2000s, these imaginative tales draw in the young readers to the wonderous world inside the iconic Raffles hotel and the adventures of its eclectic guest list.
Celebrate the spirit of inclusivity, strength and hope with us as we grow #StrongerTogether and commemorate the 57th National Day of Singapore. Add these exciting reads from our bag of books to your #TBR today!
