Singapore: A Biography

Mark Ravinder Frost & Yu-Mei Balasingamchow

Singapore: Editions Didier Millet, 2009
ISBN: 9789814217620

Singapore was not always the orderly and successful city-state that it appears to be now. Over the last seven centuries, the island has undergone several changes of identity. In this entertaining and wide-ranging account, drawn from research undertaken in collaboration with the National Museum of Singapore, Mark Ravinder Frost and Yu-Mei Balasingamchow present Singapore's mercurial lifestory as experienced by the people who participated in it. Singapore: A Biography brings together a Ming-dynasty travelogue, 19th-century memoirs and correspondence, modern oral histories and even radio and television broadcasts to reconnect a contemporary audience with the Singapore story.

While famous names from Singapore's past take their place, this new story also introduces a cast of lesser known, though no less compelling, historical personalities - from dissenting poets and radical ideologues, to patriotic factory workers and early feminists. The portrait of Singapore that emerges is dashing, lively and multi-layered, and it offers fresh insight into the ruptures and continuities that have made Singaporeans and their nation what they are today.