Description
About the Author & Translator

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War is looming when Anbarasan arrives in Singapore from Tamil Nadu in the 1940s. Stirred by charismatic Indian National Army leader Subhas Chandra Bose to take up the struggle for India’s independence, he fights alongside the Japanese against the British in Southeast Asia. In this moving novel of an early immigrant’s political and sexual awakening during World War II, Flowers at Dawn uncovers a little-known period of Singapore’s history with drama and realism.

The Cultural Medallion is Singapore’s highest cultural award, given to those who have achieved artistic excellence in the areas of literature, dance, music, theatre and art. It was instituted in 1979 to recognise individuals whose artistic excellence and commitment to the arts have enriched and made a distinction to Singapore’s arts and cultural landscape. Epigram Books’ Cultural Medallion series seeks to translate the works of Cultural Medallion winners writing in Tamil, Malay and Chinese into English. Matching writers with some of the best translators working in the field today, these books are being made available to an English-language audience for the first time.
Under the pen name Singai Ma Elangkannan, M. Balakrishnan has written six collections of short stories and six novels. His work has previously been translated into English and Malay, telecast on Radio Singapore and made into a television drama. A winner of both local and international short story writing competitions, Balakrishnan was the first Tamil writer to receive the S.E.A. Write Award in 1982. He has won the Tamizhavel Award (Gold), the Singapore Literature Prize and Singapore’s Cultural Medallion.

A.R. Venkatachalapathy is Professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai. He has taught at universities in Tirunelveli, Chennai, Chicago, and held the ICCR Chair of Indian Studies at the National University of Singapore, as well as fellowships in Paris, Cambridge, and Harvard. Published widely, both in English and Tamil, on the social, cultural and intellectual history of colonial Tamil Nadu, he translates between English and Tamil.

Authors

Flowers at Dawn