Saturday, 12 July 2014

The Straits Times

It was reported that an anonymous donor is giving half a million dollars to writers who can tell Singapore’s story best. From 2018, and every three years after that, the best history book on the nation will get a $50,000 prize. The idea to do this came from Professor Kishore Mahbubani, Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at NUS, who had appealed for a donor in an earlier article which he wrote in the paper’s By Invitation column. Prof Mahbubani said that the $500,000 will be placed in an endowment fund, and the interest would be used to support the book prize every three years, and he hopes that this will inspire others to donate to other kinds of prizes which celebrate Singapore’s 50th anniversary. The competition will be organised by the Department of History at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.