One: The Anthology

by Robert Yeo (Editor and Contributor), S. Rajaratnam (Contributor), Lim Thean Soo (Contributor)

This selection continues the work of anthologising the Singaporean short story that began with Singapore Short Story: Volumes I and II, back in 1978 and Singular Stories in 1993...The stories in this book are largely realistic and the narration is driven by character in crisis resulting in incidents leading or not leading to an end.

231 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2012

About the author

Robert Yeo has been described as “the most Singaporean of Singaporean writers.” He has written five volumes of poetry and five plays, dealing with issues ranging from political detention in Singapore to the Vietnam War and the Great Marriage Debate. He has also written a novel, a memoir and essays on cultural policy and theatre, compiled anthologies of Singaporean Literature, and co-written books on the teaching of Literature for secondary schools. In 1978, he attended the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program, and in 1995 was a Fulbright Scholar. From 1977 to 1994, he chaired two drama committees, the Drama Advisory Committee and the Drama Review Committee, which helped to develop English-language theatre in Singapore, and in recognition of his service, he was awarded the Public Service Medal in 1991.

His triptych of connected plays—Are You There, Singapore?, One Year Back Home and Changi—was collected in 2001 as The Singapore Trilogy. In October 2009, his libretto for opera titled Kannagi, a short chamber piece based on an Indian epic poem, was staged in Singapore’s Sri Mariamman Temple with John Sharpley as composer. Another libretto, a full-length work titled Fences (also with John Sharpley) was staged in August 2012. Epigram Books has re-released his 1986 novel The Adventures of Holden Heng in 2011, published his career-spanning retrospective poetry collection The Best of Robert Yeo in 2012, and released the playscript to his 1992 stageplay The Eye of History in 2016.

Yeo was awarded the SEA Write Award in 2011. Currently, he teaches creative writing at Singapore Management University and mentors for NAC’s Mentor Access Project.

Reviews

[cyfa.haha · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was v cool to read stories from Singapore authors through the ages. Like diff points of view of the different Singapores that have been experienced. And also diff peoples takes on a variety of singapore stuff.

One bad thing was — some of the stories in here have very many bad typos. Like idk if they scanned an old manuscript and got AI to do text capture but didn’t spellcheck/go through or what. But it can get quite bad lol.

But overall I really enjoyed reading this and there were some really good stories in there, i realised that some of them have no "moral" or are really just short stories and that's it which is kinda thought provoking is guess.

[Elisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

The expectations I had for a lot of these local writers set me up for disappointment. Maybe if read in a building of Singlit way, instead of characteristic of the best of Singlit like the authors are now recognised for.

[Jac · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sorry but as a Singaporean none of these stories resonated with me at all.