One: The Anthology

by S. Rajaratnam (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

S. Rajaratnam was born in 1915 in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and raised in Seremban, Malaya. In 1935, he left for London to study law. There, during World War II, he wrote short stories to high acclaim. He also wrote radio scripts for the BBC. In 1947, he returned to Singapore and worked as a journalist. Seven years later, he co-founded the People's Action Party, and in 1959 became the first Minister of Culture of self-governing Singapore. In 1965, after the separation from Malaysia, he became independent Singapore's first Foreign Minister. He died in 2006.

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.