The prize recognises individuals and organisations who have made outstanding contributions to Singapore’s defence capabilities. It also serves to foster technological innovation and breakthroughs in defence science and technology.
The winner receives a cash prize of up to $1 million, a trophy and a citation. In addition, the winning team will also be awarded a grant of up to $20 million to further develop their research and development initiatives and accelerate their path to commercialisation.
A project engineer from India, Balasubramanian Chithambaram, has won a whopping S$1 million (over Rs 8 crore) in the latest lucky draw at Mustafa Jewellery. The win is not only a huge boost for his family’s finances but will also allow him to contribute to charitable causes.
The 2023 edition of the Singapore Prize saw 17 writers, translators and comic artists win awards across four languages at the event organised by the National Book Council of Singapore (NBCS). It also introduced a Readers’ Favourite category this year which was won by history professor Wang Gungwu for his book on Chinese-language writing in Singapore.
Other winners included historian Khir Johari for his book The Food of the Singapore Malays, which took 14 years to complete and weighs in at a whopping 3.2kg. It beat five other books to take home the prize in the history category.
Distinguished translator Jeremy Tiang won the English translation category for his work with Chinese author Zhang Yueran’s Cocoon, a novel about two childhood friends putting to bed dark secrets linking them in the long shadow of the Cultural Revolution. The inaugural English comic or graphic novel category was won by Kenfoo’s self-published Cockman, a story of a chicken from another dimension stranded on Earth in human form, for its “total lack of seriousness and compromise and over-the-top audacity”.
Singapore Prize was established to recognise outstanding published works by authors in Singapore. It is open to books in any of the country’s official languages: Chinese, English, Malay and Tamil. There are 12 top prizes – up to $10,000 each – for fiction, non-fiction and poetry in each language.
In the future, there could be plans to expand the types of works that can qualify for the prize, said Professor Kishore Mahbubani, senior advisor (university and global relations) at NUS. Citing movies like 12 Years a Slave as examples, he added that history can sometimes be told more effectively in fictional and other formats.
The finalists in each of the eight categories will be announced on Thursday. The winners will be honoured at the awards ceremony on Monday, 6 November.
This year’s ceremony will feature a special panel discussion on the impact of climate change and how we can repair our planet. The event will also host a series of local activations.