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Lion City

On sale

2nd September 2021

Price: £12.99

Genre

History / Singapore

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Selected: ebook / ISBN-13: 9781408713587

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Lion City tells the extraordinary story of Singapore – the world’s most successful city state.

In 1965, Singapore’s GDP per capita was on a par with Jordan. Now it has outstripped Japan. After the Second World War and a sudden rupture with newly formed Malaysia, Singapore found itself independent – and facing a crisis. It took the bloody-minded determination and vision of Lee Kuan Yew, its founding premier, to take a small island of diverse ethnic groups with a fragile economy and hostile neighbours and meld it into Asia’s first globalised city.

Jeevan Vasagar, former Singapore correspondent for the Financial Times, masterfully takes us through the intricate history, present and future of this unique diamond-shaped island one degree north of the equator, where new and old have remained connected. Lion City is a personal, insightful and essential guide to the city, and how its remarkable rise is shaping East Asia and the rest of the world.

Reviews

Washington Independent Review of Books
[An] enlightening look at how Singapore has become what it is today.
Kirkus Reviews
A comprehensive look at the sleek city-state that strongman Lee Kuan Yew forged into a model society of authority and order.
Asian Review of Books
Vasagar gives Singapore a fair-and detailed-shake
Sholto Byrnes, The TLS
Unexpectedly moving...a good introduction for the general reader suddenly turns to questions of love, grief, deceit and identity