Heartland is the first novel written by Daren Shiau.[1] The book received the Singapore Literature Prize Commendation Award in 1998,[2] together with Alfian Sa'at's Corridor. In 2007, an academic edition of Heartland was adopted into a textbook for Singapore secondary schools offering English literature in their GCE O-Level curriculum.[3]
In 2015, MediaCorp commissioned the adaptation of Heartland into a telemovie directed by K Rajagopal.[4]Heartland, the telemovie, was broadcast in August 2015.[5]
Playwright Alfian Sa’at, in his review of Shiau’s second book, following Heartland, noted: “One really has to admire Daren Shiau as a writer. Peninsular has its precedent in Shiau’s novel, Heartland, which gives its intentions solid credibility.”[6]
Commenting on Heartland in his essay on Shiau’s work, Emeritus Professor Edwin Thumboo wrote: “A personal vision. A personal response. That is what Shiau has developed to a remarkable extent. In his interview with Philip Cheah, Shiau said apropos of Heartland, his first book, that he wanted to write about ‘an individual trying to find his sense of place in space (geography) and time (history), and that the Sang Nila Utama myth/history is important in the novel’s structure because ‘its ambiguity (even to the extent of whether he really encountered a lion) questions our reliance on history as fact and reinforces the theme of lost (and false) paternity”.[7]
Dr. Angelia Poon, notes on Heartland, in her essay ‘Common Ground, Multiple Claims: Representing and Constructing Singapore’s Heartland’: “Daren Shiau’s Heartland (1999) is one of the first Singapore novels in English to render the experience of living in Heartlands a central theme and to link it crucially to an investigation of identity and place. Kelvin Tong and Jasmine Ng’s feature film Eating Air (1999)... an independent film for the international film circuit, is also a significant contribution to the depiction of the heartland in Singapore… Both texts seek implicitly to claim the heartland space and the figure of the Heartlander as authentically Singaporean, disclosing to differing extents and levels of self-consciousness, the cultural, social, and political fissures in Singapore society, as well as the limits of imagining alternatives”.[8]
Background
The narrative of Heartland follows three years in the life of Wing Seng, an ambivalent Chinese teenager who experiences a sense of ennui. “Wing, who has just been conscripted, is unable to reconcile his future but unwilling to dwell in the past. He finds his own meaning in an intense attachment to his surrounding landscape. Yet, as relationships and the years slip by him, Wing is irresistibly forced to question his own certainties and the wisdom of the people he values”, Heartland’s synopsis explains.[1]
Influenced by the style of Czech writer Milan Kundera, the novel juxtaposes precolonial, colonial, and modern narratives, starting with Alexander the Great, believed to be Sang Nila Utama’s ancestor. Scholar Makoto Kawaguchi, in his thesis on Heartland written at King’s College London, notes that “the novel weaves episodes from Singapore’s precolonial and colonial past into its main text, drawing on sources such as the Sejarah Melayu (Malay Annals) to provide a counter-narrative to balance Singapore’s technocratic obsession with economic progress.[9]
During the contemporary settings of Heartland's narrative, as Kawaguchi remarks, Wing Seng “attends an elite junior college after his secondary school education at a neighborhood school but fails to do well enough to make it to university. He contemplates a polytechnic education after his national service, a move that has implications for his future mobility and class position in a Singapore concerned with grades and the kinds of schools one attends. The novel’s climax lies in Wing’s discovery that the man he had always thought of as Fifth Uncle might actually be his father, a realization that complicates the idea of origin and birth as determinants of individual identity”.[8]
Kawaguchi observes, in his thesis,[9] “Mapped onto this economic division is a spatial distinction… In one of Heartland’s lyrical passages, this spatial distinction is invoked in order to show that spaces of the heartland are equally as important to the nation as the skyscrapers that comprise the financial district. Following an argument between his Fifth Uncle and his mother over the sale of the family flat, a confused Wing takes the lift to the top floor of one of the high-rise flats of his estate. The view he takes in was ‘was nothing spectacular like the cityscape, just mundane places he was familiar with. Yet it was beautiful.In the tiny identical rooms, he knew people were eating, making love, watching TV. People who were, that afternoon, joyous and celebrating, sad and mourning, full of dreams, washed out with despair. Silent as a painting, the estate spoke in its own voice’”. It is precisely familiarity, Kawaguchi argues, “that lies at the heart of what makes the ‘mundane places’ of the estate ‘beautiful’, exemplifying Yi-Fu Tan’s assertion[10][pageneeded] that ‘what begins as undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to know it better and endow it with value’”.[9]
Parallels to James Joyce’s Ulysses
The novel Heartland bears several parallels to James Joyce’s novel Ulysses, with at least fifteen counterparts and analogues.[11] Kawaguchi notes, in his thesis: “Heartland's second epigraph is a quote attributed to an exiled James Joyce, who was said to have declared that ‘when I die, Dublin will be engraved on my heart.' The use of the heart as a metaphor for ‘home’ in Heartland is apparent from the novel's title.”[9]
↑ Tuan, Yi-Fu (2011). Space and place: the perspective of experience (7. printed.). Minneapolis, Minn.: Univ. of Minnesota Press. ISBN978-0-8166-3877-2.
Telok Blangah is a subzone region and housing estate located in the area behind Keppel Harbour in Bukit Merah, Singapore. Teluk Blanga is the district between Pasir Panjang and Tanjong Pagar.
This article deals with writing that deals with LGBT themes in a Singapore context. It covers literary works of fiction, such as novels, short stories, plays and poems. It also includes non-fiction works, both scholarly and targeted at the general reader, such as dissertations, journal or magazine articles, books and even web-based content. Although Singapore lacks a dedicated gay book publisher or gay bookshop, it does have at least one dedicated gay library, Pelangi Pride Centre, which is open weekly to the public. Many of the works cited here may be found both in Pelangi Pride Centre, as well as the National Library or other academic libraries in Singapore, as well as in some commercial bookshops under 'gender studies' sections.
The literature of Singapore comprises a collection of literary works by Singaporeans. It is written chiefly in the country's four official languages: English, Malay, Standard Mandarin and Tamil.
Cyril Wong is a poet, fiction author and literary critic.
Edwin Nadason Thumboo B.B.M. is a Singaporean poet and academic who is regarded as one of the pioneers of English literature in Singapore.
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The Singapore Literature Prize is a biennial award in Singapore to recognise outstanding published works by Singaporean authors in any of the four official languages: Chinese, English, Malay and Tamil. The competition is organised by the Singapore Book Council (SBC) with the support of the National Arts Council.
Koh Buck Song is a Singaporean writer, poet, and country brand adviser. He is the author and editor of more than 40 books, including nine books of poetry and haiga art. He works as a writer, editor and consultant in branding, communications strategy and corporate social responsibility in Singapore. He has held several exhibitions as a Singaporean pioneer of haiga art, developed from a 16th-century Japanese art form combining ink sketches with haiku poems.
The early history of Singapore refers to its pre-colonial era before 1819, when the British East India Company led by Stamford Raffles established a trading settlement on the island and set in motion the history of modern Singapore.
The National Arts Council (NAC) is a statutory board established on 15 October 1991 to oversee the development of arts in Singapore. It is under the purview of the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth. The NAC provides grants, scholarships, awards and platforms for arts practitioners, as well as arts education and programmes for the general public.
Ethos Books is an independent book publisher based in Singapore established in 1997. It is an imprint of Pagesetters Services Pte Ltd, a communications and design house. Ethos Books specialises in publishing literary works of fiction, non-fiction and poetry primarily from writers in Singapore. It has published several award-winning poetry volumes and anthologies by authors such as Felix Cheong, Alvin Pang, Alfian Sa'at, Cyril Wong and Daren Shiau. In recent years, it has published critical works on Singapore studies by scholars and activists such as Cherian George, Loh Kah Seng, Kevin YL Tan, Thum Ping Tjin, and Teo You Yenn.
Daren Shiau, BBM, PBM, is a Singaporean novelist, poet, conservationist, and lawyer in private practice qualified in Singapore, England and Wales. He is an author of five books.
Alfian bin Sa'at, better known as Alfian Sa'at, is a Singaporean playwright, poet, and writer. He is known for penning a body of English- and Malay-language plays, poems, and prose exploring race, sexuality, and politics, topics considered provocative in Singapore. Alfian has also translated Malay-language novels by Malay Singaporean writers to English. Alfian has received a number of national literature awards, such as the 2001 Young Artist Award and three Life! Theatre Awards for Best Original Script. Alfian is the resident playwright of theatre group W!LD RICE.
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The names of Singapore include the various historical appellations as well as contemporary names and nicknames in different languages used to describe the island, city or country of Singapore. A number of different names have been given to the settlement or the island of Singapore all through history, the earliest record may have been from the 2nd century AD. Possible mentions of Pulau Ujong, the name for the island of Singapore, may be found in Chinese works, and it was also referred to as Temasek in Malay and Javanese literature. Sometime in the 14th century the name was changed to Singapura, which is now rendered as Singapore in English. Singapura means "Lion City" in Sanskrit, and Sang Nila Utama is usually credited with naming the city, although its actual origin is uncertain.
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