Voicing Asia: History and The Real of Fiction

Presented by The Department of World Languages and Literatures and SFU's David Lam Centre.

Join us for a book reading and conversation with the writer and translator, Jeremy Tiang.

Aristotle argues that poetry, like literature, ‘is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history.’ As the philosopher goes on to reason, literature’s claim is that it expresses the universal whereas history stops at the particular.

Jeremy Tiang’s award-winning Singaporean novel, State of Emergency, comes near to having it both ways. Told with power and frankness, this polyphonic work addresses the tangled histories of individuals during the tumultuous days of political detention and leftist movements in Singapore and Malaysia - a tale centred upon a journalist who returns to her homeland to uncover the truth of a massacre.

JEREMY TIANG is a novelist and playwright, and the translator of over thirty books from Chinese. He was awarded the Singapore Literature Prize for his novel State of Emergency and for his translation of Zhang Yueran’s Cocoon, and he recently won an Obie Award for his play Salesman之死. Originally from Singapore, he now lives in New York City.