Written Country: The History of Singapore through Literature by Gwee Li Sui

Written Country: The History of Singapore through Literature Reviews

• 
  Joan

  the problem with this book, i feel, is that it is a very good concept that does not play out in writing.
  
  the concept of the antho is actually pretty interesting. i think it's one that's been done before, but it's quite interesting to see how things are put together and the narrative constructed. if you're looking for the history of singapore, it's a pretty decent book, i guess. individually, there are some standout pieces.
  
  the problem arises though, because the way that the book is edited makes it very,, disconcerting to read. the differences in writing styles over the course of the antho means that writing voice varies quite a bit, and the switches can be quite jarring. + the fact that author representation is uhhhh. not the best, demographically speaking, makes for a very odd narrative. + the selection of "significant" events gets a bit strange after the Official Government Decided™ history of singapore's creation ends.
  
  i didn't quite finish the book, because of time constraints, but it was very hard for me to read at one go. so :-/ 3.5/5 stars.
• 
  Jon

  This wonderful anthology tells Singapore’s history through excerpts of prose, drama and poetry. A brief informative commentary on key events from the fall of Singapore to the death of Lee Kuan Yew accompanies the literary texts.
  
  Gwee Li Sui’s introduction sets out the editorial principles guiding his approach to the selection and arrangement of the texts. The discussion raises fascinating issues on:
  
  - the ’factually sound and the emotionally consistent’,
  - the play between first hand and imagined experience,
  - how history and literature relate to each other.
  
  What is that quality literature possesses that makes history come alive and something more than a list of observed facts and descriptions?
  
  In the very first text, Lim Thean Soo demonstrates this quality when he writes about the schoolboy who runs to the concrete roof of his family home to watch the shelling and counter shelling, and the bombs falling across Singapore on the 15th February 1942.
  
  Gwee notes, inter alia, writers form characters that possess ’some quality of having lived through time’ and possessing deeper forms of knowledge by ‘allowing information to be thought back to us - accordingly rethought, made meaningful.’
  
  Gwee writes ‘[a]s ... texts enter specific moments, they effectively give back to events their emotions and, in this way, generate reflections and commentaries from within.’
  
  The texts that especially achieved this for me were Lim Thean Soo's The Siege on the fall of Singapore, Meira Chand's An Assortment of Knives on the Maria Hertogh Riots, A Sudden Madness by Dave Chua on the Pulau Senang mutiny, Confrontasi by Rex Shelley on the MacDonald House bombing, Siong wei by Koh Buck Song and Tan Hwee Hwa on the closure of Bugis Street, and People say this building suay by Haresh Sharma on the Hotel New World collapse.
  
  
  Photographs from the Kinokuniya launch are here.
• 
  Blatique

  A comprehensive look into Singapore's history and its associated literary works, it suffers from the inevitable outcome of anthologies of such scale: the far ranging quality, and merit achieved from author to author. Not to discredit such monolithic efforts, if one could associate the distinctiveness of a country's literary work to the confrontation (or at the very least acknowledgement of) of it's local political, social, and historical climate, it is certainly without reasonable doubt that all the works present within this anthology are uniquely Singaporean. Such narrow definitions however ignores the significance of any coherent style (be they in the form of poetic conventions, shared allusions, or archetypal narrative structures to name a few) that could lead to a more concrete literary identity, notwithstanding aesthetic sensibilities that could evoke sentimentality for the country of Singapore.
  
  This anthology serves its purpose to tell the history of Singapore as a polity birthed from its caesarean cut experienced during the Second World War up till the then fresh aches of *** death, it too exposes the inadequacies of all the literary genres–poetry, prose, and drama–that is still sprouting within Singapore.