A late start
It is said that literature appeared in Singapore with the arrival of the British, who reclaimed the archipelago following the Treaty of Vienna in 1815. In fact, the milestone was reached at the beginning of the 20th century, in 1937, when FMSR: A Poem was published in London under the name of Francis P. Ng, pseudonym of Teo Poh Leng, a Malaysian teacher and school principal living in Singapore. Written in free verse and strongly inspired by European modernism, it was a poetic account of a train journey, hence its title, FMSR being the acronym for Federated Malay States Railways. Singapore's literary journey came to a screeching halt, however, and was not quietly resumed until independence. Patience was required, a gift cultivated by Goh Sin Tub (1927-2004), who didn't publish his first collection of short stories(Honor and Other Stories) until he was sixty, and his novel The Nan-Mei-Su Girls of Emerald Hill two years later. Rex Anthony Shelley, born in 1930, also took a slow start to fiction - Shrimp People was not published until 1991 - but this did not prevent him from enjoying a successful literary career, as he was awarded the Singapore Literature Prize three times by the NBDCS (National Book Development Council of Singapore).
However, these two men had not wasted their time: in addition to his professional successes, Shelley was a deserving self-taught man, teaching himself Japanese, painting, the piano... and the accordion, while Goh Sin Tub created the Youth Circle Poetry for budding writers at St. Joseph's Institution. One of them was destined for posterity: Edwin Thumboo, born in 1933, is considered the pioneer of English-language Singaporean poetry. He began publishing as early as 1956(Rib of Earth), while still a student, and went on to lead his career on both fronts, becoming Professor at the University of Singapore, then Head of the English Literature Department and finally Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. On the writing side, he published a string of books - Gods Can Die in 1977, Ulysses by the Merlion in 1979, A Third Mal in 1993, Still Travelling in 2008 - and won numerous awards: the Southeast Asian Writers' Prize in 1979, the NBDCS Poetry Prize on three occasions (in 1978, 1980 and 1994), the Pingat Jasa Gemilang Medal of Merit in 2006... It has often been said that he was "unofficially Singapore's poet laureate", as, particularly after independence in 1965, his work was tinged with nationalism in a bid to forge a common identity for a multicultural population. This is particularly evident in his collection, which features the figure of the "merlion", a chimera with the head of a lion and the body of a fish, which serves as the country's emblem and recalls an ancient legend dating back to the time when the country was still called Tamesek. In fact, the literary scene in Singapore has long been political, as evidenced by the creation of the Asas 50 (Angkatan Sasterawan: writers' movement) in 1950. This group not only aspired to innovative literature, nor did it split when the "art for society" versus "art for art" dispute arose, it also wished to be as critical of colonization as it was of the weight of tradition. In short, he opposed oppression in all its forms.
Politics and openness
Unsurprisingly, some Singaporean authors have acquired a reputation as dissidents, such as Gopal Baratham (1935-2002), who preferred to publish his novel A Candle or the Sun in London in 1991, evoking 1987's Operation Spectrum. He followed this up three years later with The Caning of Michael Fay, named after an American teenager who had a violent run-in with the Singapore police in 1994. This didn't stop him from winning awards - two NBDCS prizes in 1982 and 1990 for his short story collections Figments of Experience and People Make You Cry and Other Stories, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations prize in 1991 - nor from being staged by a theatrical troupe or praised in The Straits Time newspaper. The stage was also eminently political, to the detriment of Kuo Pao Kun - born in China in 1939, where he lived until he was 10 - who was imprisoned from 1976 to 1980. In 1990, he was awarded the Cultural Medallion for his contributions and commitment, and his social realism plays have been performed internationally and translated into many languages, including French(Le Cercueil est trop grand pour la fosse, éditions des Cygnes). This worldwide curiosity also benefited Goh Poh Seng, whose very life was marked by multiculturalism: he was born in Kuala Lumpur in 1936, studied in Dublin and then became a doctor in Singapore, before emigrating to Canada in 1986, where he died in 2010. His novel If We Dream Too Long, an initiation story about a group of teenagers, was shunned in the archipelago when it came out in 1972, but is now a classic studied at university. Soon after its publication, it was translated into Russian, Japanese and Tagalog, confirming Singapore's presence on the international literary scene.
Everyday life, traditions, cosmopolitanism: these are the sources from which writers such as Robert Yeo, known for his plays (from Are You There, Singapore? in 1974 to The Singapore Trilogy in 2001), but who has also written poetry and a novel(The Adventures of Holden Heng, 1986), or Catherine Lim, who caused a sensation with her collections of short stories in which she didn't hesitate to pinpoint the little foibles of her fellow citizens, from Little Ironies: Stories of Singapore, a classic since its publication in 1978. Her talent has been applauded worldwide thanks to a prolific body of work in which the role of women, particularly in traditional Chinese culture, is never underestimated. More discreet by nature, Arthur Yap (1943-2006) was a poet, sometimes experimental, who won the admiration of his peers as far away as New York thanks to his skilful use of "Singlish", that typically Singaporean English. Finally, it would be impossible to discuss the art of poetry - so highly prized in Singapore - without mentioning Lee Tzu Pheng(Prospect of a Drowning, Short Circuits, Sing a Song of Mankind, etc.) and Boey Kim Cheng, who won the NBDCS Poetry Prize at the age of 24 with his very first collection Somerwhere-Bound, the prelude to a body of work that has been widely acclaimed and rewarded(After the Fire, Clear Brightness, The Singer). Haresh Sharma, also born in 1965, has enjoyed similar success on the theatrical stage. Of his hundred or so plays to date (from 1989's Lanterns Never Go Out to 2019's Cluster Fish ), many have been staged from London to Melbourne. Fundamentally Happy (2015) was judged one of the best plays written in 50 years by The Business Times. The decidedly fertile year of 1965 finally saw the birth of novelist Colin Cheong, who has published no fewer than thirty books, the best-known of which is Tangerine (1996). An accomplished artist, he swapped his career as a journalist for a post as a dance teacher.
Surprising vitality
However, the generations born in the 70s and onwards have nothing to be ashamed of in comparison, especially as the number of works destined for translation - particularly into our language - is constantly on the increase. Literary genres are also multiplying, as are comics, which are gradually making their appearance, whether with Dave Chua and his graphic novel L'Homme de la maison (published by Steinkis), or with Charlie Chan Hock Chye : une vie dessinée (published by Uban Comics), a fake biography that won Sonny Liew three awards in France, Singapore and the United States. Still under-translated, Singaporean poetry is nonetheless vigorous, as demonstrated by the fame of Alvin Pang(Testing the Silence, City of Rain), invited to many literary salons in Southeast Asia, and the warm welcome given to Cyril Wong, whose poems(Excess Baggage and Claim, Below, etc.) have sometimes been set to music. Two exceptions, however: Toh Hsien Min, whose collection Dans quel sens tombent les feuilles will be a pleasure to read thanks to the remarkable work of Editions Caractères, and who founded the archipelago's leading literary magazine, Quaterly Literary Review Singapore, and Christine Chia, born in 1979, whose autobiography "in raw verse", as publisher Le Corridor bleu puts it, can be discovered under the title La Loi des remariages, followed by Séparation : une histoire. This work has been widely acclaimed by contemporary poets, including Alfian bin Sa'at, the enfant terrible of Singaporean letters. With multiple ancestries (Malaysia, Java, China, Sumatra) and writing in several languages, Alfian bin Sa'at is just as much at home on the poetic stage as on the theatrical one. In fact, the theater is doing just as well, thanks to the inexhaustible energy of Jean Tay, who works on both the status of women(Water from the Well, The Knot) and the history of Singapore(Sisters), to the multiple talents of playwright-director Joel Tan, and to the artistic fibre of Faith Ng, associate director of Singapore's Checkpoint Theatre.
The archipelago, which has changed its face in the space of a few centuries, will certainly not cease to metamorphose and surprise us. In literature, new writers, often women, are determined to hit the nail on the head. In Foreign Bodies (1997), for example, Hwee Hwee Tan explores the gulf between ultra-contemporary Singapore and conservative Singapore, while in Heartland (1999) Daren Shiau tackles the issue of uprootedness, Balli Kaur Jaswal tackles societal change(Inheritance) and the Indian diaspora(Le Club des veuves qui aimaient la littérature and Les Incroyables aventures des sœurs Shergill, published by Belfond), while Jing-Jing Lee revives the memory of the women who had to submit to the Japanese occupiers in How We Disappeared (2019). Last but not least, Rachel Heng and Clarissa Goenawan open up new perspectives with a dystopia(Suicide Club) and a thriller(Lune d'automne, published by Les Escales) respectively.
